

























CHRISTIAN WORK 


AND 


CONSOLATION: 


THE PROBLEM OF AN EFFECTIVE AND 
HAPPY LIFE. 


BY ABEL STEVENS, LL.D. 



NEW YORK: 

PHILLIPS & HUNT. 

CINCINNATI: 
WALDEN & STOWE. 
1882. 






Copyright 1882, by 

PHILLIPS & HUNT, 


New York. 


■t**" %%'/ /S^)7F 


CONTENTS. 


PART FIRST—WORK. 

PAGE 

I. Human Agency in the Scheme of the World .... 9 

II. Lay Activity in Church Work. 15 

“ Faith Works ” — The Early Church — Continental 
Protestantism. 

III. Lay Activity in the Primitive Church. 21 

The Priesthood of the People—Genesis of Church Order 
—A Japanese Church—Foreign Lay Work—Primitive 
Lay Work. 

IV. Texts from Ruskin and Chalmers . 32 

Fallacy of Ruskin—Mental Work—Watt’s Invention— 
Work a Condition of Happiness—Chalmers’ Exhorta¬ 
tion—Genuine Life. 

V. Wealth—The Old Charter-house. 45 

Great Liberality in the United States—Great Need of it 
—The Future of the Country—Thomas Sutton and 
the Old Charter-house—Bishop Hall—A new Order 
of Nobility. 


i 







4 


Contents. 


PAGE 

VI. The Christian Theory of Life. 58 

Tarrying by the “ Stuff”—They that Stand and Wait 
do also Serve—Consecration of Secular Life. 

VII. A Text from Goethe—Aim in Life. 62 

Why the World has not been Evangelized—The Perfec¬ 
tion of Nature inheres in its Imperfection—Every Life 
should have an Aim. 

VIII. Your Vocation—Examples. 68 

Vocation in the Latin Church—The Scotch Layman 
Haldane — Practical Counsels — Impressions — Anec¬ 
dotes. 

IX. The Little Talents. 75 

Importance of Little Things — Parable of the Tal¬ 
ents—Its most striking Lesson—A Pastoral Prob¬ 
lem. 

X. The Eleventh Commandment—Manners. 81 

Manners a Ministry of Life—Usher and Rutherford— 
Ethical Importance of Manners. 

XI. The Greatest Power—Character. 91 

Love of Power—Genius—The Sublimities of Force— 
Moral Power — Character — Fenelon— St. Philip of 
Russia. 








Contents. 


5 


XII. Love in Christian Ethics . P io* 

The Fulfilling of the Law —Paul on the Righteous¬ 
ness of the Law and that of Faith—The Excellency of 
Charity. 

• 

XIII. A Text from Guizot—Enthusiasm . Iir 

Madame de Stael on Enthusiasm—Her Discussion with 
Sismondi on Religion — Logic and Enthusiasm — 

“ Heartiness” in ordinary Work. 


PART SECOND—CONSOLATION. 

I. Peace in Believing. 123 

Scriptural Testimony—Authors of “ Uncle Tom ” and 
“The Schonberg-Cotta Family”—The Rest of Faith 
—A Necessary Qualification. 

II. Christian Assurance. 134 

Carlyle and Sterling’s Mistake—A Heroic Example— 

Sir William Hamilton on Assurance—Scriptural Tes¬ 
timony. 

III. The Discipline of Affliction. 141 

Scriptural Theory of Affliction—Counsels to Those who 

Suffer—a Kempis’ Prayer. 

IV. A Text from Luther . 150 

Luther’s Method with Trials—A Subtle Artifice—Ex¬ 
treme Trials—An Infinite Resource. 










6 


Contents. 


PAGE 

V. “Be of Good Comfort” . 160 

“The Joy of the Lord shall be your Strength” — 

A Cheerful T emperament — Comfort in Death. 

VI. How to Suffer . 169 

Example of Suffering—Dr. Arnold’s Sister — Chronic 
Mental Sufferings. 

VII. Knowledge and Happiness . 176 

Enjoyments of the Natural Life—Prescott, the Historian 
—The Gradations of Happiness—Pleasures of Knowl¬ 
edge—Knowledge in Connection with Immortality. 

VIII. The End— How Much we have to Die for. 189 
Paul’s Views of Death—The Primitive Christians’ View 
of it—Difference between our Condition and Theirs 
—The Endless Procession of Humanity—Fictitious 
Associations of Death—Final Safety. 





PART FIRST. 


CHRISTIAN WORK. 


































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Christian Work and Consolation. 

— - 


WORK. 


I. 

HUMAN AGENCY IN THE SCHEME OF THE WORLD. 

< ( 'INHERE is purer gold in the hoof of the camel 
than in the crown of the Caliph," says the 
Arabian proverb. There is Oriental wisdom as 
well as metaphor in the'saying. The gold of the 
crown of the Caliph remains of the same intrinsic 
value; the camel bears the merchandise of the 
Moslem over the desert and redoubles its value. 

Work is one of the most intrinsic things of our 
world. It is so valuable that it puts value into 
things that would otherwise be valueless. A great 
fact is this—a chief fact in the divine programme 
of the world. 

The perfection of the world is in its apparent im¬ 
perfection. Nature presupposes the supplementary 
action of man. Her most precious things are 
crude in her mines or her soils; man must roll up 
his sleeves and dig them out. He must plow the 





io Christian Work and Consolation. 

soil, and scatter the minute seeds, and Nature will 
yield bread for her millions, and her plains will 
“ shake like Lebanon.” The potato is a crude root, 
the peach a poisonous product, till man’s labor ren¬ 
ders them edible. There is not a flower in your 
garden which does not owe its luxuriance and 
beauty to the labor of man on its inferior forms. 
Human labor is, then, an integral part of the scheme 
of nature; her perfection is in the fact that she 
leaves her crude materials for the voluntary activity 
of her highest factor—man. 

There is a great deal of natural theology in this 
fact. A genuine philosopher could make a good 
theistic argument out of it. The elementary pro¬ 
visions of nature for man are boundless; and man 
has, in his faculty of labor, boundless power to com¬ 
plement her provisions. This, we repeat, is the 
scheme of God in our world; and in it is the per¬ 
fection of what we call nature—that is to say, of the 
divine order of things. 

Labor is not the primal curse recorded by Moses; 
that is, want, necessitating excessive labor—the 
“ sweat of the brow.” But all good work tends to 
mitigate the curse, and to reduce the amount of 
labor by improving its forms. It is not an improb¬ 
able hope that man may, at last, reach the mini¬ 
mum of toil, by the multiplication of insensible fac¬ 
tors of work, by instrumental labor—affording the 
maximum of wholesome leisure for intellectual and 


Human Agency. 


ii 


social enjoyment, and for all the other higher capa¬ 
bilities of his life. 

It is a beautiful fact, and a grand datum for nat¬ 
ural theology, that whatsoever is normal to a man’s 
constitution, or to the natural conditions of his ex¬ 
istence, is consoling to him, is inherently felicitous. 
All true work is such. 

Rightly conducted, physical dabor invigorates his 
physical life, and renders it joyous with that deli¬ 
cious comfort which we call health. His appetite, 
his sleep, his whole consciousness of animal life, are 
sanctified, we may well say, by faithful work. 

The greatest labor is that of brain workers. With 
not a few its beginnings are wearisome and repul¬ 
sive ; but he that works thoroughly soon acquires 
the habit of mental labor; and the habit, once ac¬ 
quired, becomes one of the most exhaustless and 
refined sources of enjoyment known to man. No 
great scholar or artist works merely for money, nor 
even for reputation; he works because he loves his 
work—it is the felicity of his life. It is asked, Why 
is it so ? The only answer is, God has made it so. 
An inactive or unproductive man is a miserable 
man, and the whole order of the universe tends to 
make him so. 

One of the most interesting facts about this di¬ 
vine order of the world, as we have called it—one 
of its most striking bearings on natural theology— 
is the incontestable truth that the happiness of the 


i2 Christian Work and Consolation. 


worker is graduated to the gradations of his work. 
In proportion as it ascends does his soul rise in im¬ 
provement and blessedness. Physical labor, rightly 
conducted, gives health, appetite, sleep, allays the 
passions, multiplies material comforts. Intellectual 
labor opens boundless vistas of thought and of 
ideal life to the student. But if he rises higher, if 
he enters with strenuous working power into the 
moral sphere, how much more refined, sublime, di¬ 
vine even, become his consciousness, his happiness! 
He that achieves a great material work finds, prob¬ 
ably, in his achievement alone, a greater consola¬ 
tion than in any pecuniary advantage it may afford 
him; and this is God’s benediction on his labor. 
He that discovers, in his midnight study, a new 
truth, knows an incomparably higher joy; and we 
can hardly wonder that Newton became somewhat 
insane when he demonstrated to himself the true 
theory of the universe. He earned no money by 
the discovery; no toiler in the fields or the mines 
had labored as he had ; but he felt that he had 
scaled the heavens and was striding among the 
suns. He had come nearer than any other philo¬ 
sophical student to the center of the universe—the 
throne of God—and its ineffable light dazzled and 
overwhelmed him with seraphic joy. And this was 
God’s benediction on his work—work done in re¬ 
tirement, but to resound forever through the intel¬ 
lectual world. 


Human Agency. 


13 


But there is better work; and, what is particu¬ 
larly notable about it, is the fact that this higher 
work is the least of all restricted to particular, ad¬ 
ventitious conditions—is most open to all earnest, 
sincere souls. It is moral work. Muscle is neces¬ 
sary to the successful physical worker ; special brain 
faculty to the successful intellectual worker; but 
the highest work, moral work—that which most 
hallows life, most refines and ennobles the soul, most 
consoles the heart—is practicable to all. Nay, oft¬ 
en is it the case that in the most humble conditions 
of existence, in the ignoring of a just but dispar¬ 
aged or persecuted cause, in work in the abysses of 
poverty and vice, in the fires of martyrdom for di¬ 
vine but rejected truth, in the exemplary patience 
and heroism of a sick chamber or a death-bed, the 
best work out of heaven is done by men—work in 
which the soul grows angelic, and over which angels 
spread their protective wings. 

And not only is this the best work, it is the hap¬ 
piest ; as it brings men into nearer affinities with 
angels and with God, it partakes, also, somewhat of 
their bliss. The consciousness of no man on this 
planet is happier than that of him who suffers for 
the right. Even self-sacrifice for the right is self¬ 
salvation. Self-sacrifice is often the truest self-in¬ 
terest. No victory is sublimer than that of “ faith ” 
which “ overcometh the world ! ” sublimer words 
than could ever be applied to Alexander the Great, 


14 Christian Work and Consolation. 

who was said to have conquered the world. No 
man has ever shared his own resources with a per¬ 
ishing sufferer, (especially in “ the name of a disci¬ 
ple,”) without finding more enjoyment in his di¬ 
minished means than he could in the selfish reten¬ 
tion of them all. 

Is it really so? No thoughtful man doubts it in 
his heart. If it is again asked, Why is it so ? The 
only reply again is, God has made it so. This is 
his programme of the world. The fact that such is 
the condition of man on this planet, is proof that a 
moral world environs the planet; that there is a 
beneficent God ruling over it, and that there are 
beyond it transcendent destinies for the souls thus 
conditioned upon it. 


Lay Activity in Church Work. 


i5 


II 


LAY ACTIVITY IN CHURCH WORK. 
HOUGH theologians differ somewhat about 



-A- the extent, if not the nature, of the “ sanctifi¬ 
cation ” taught by the holy Scriptures, they agree 
respecting the “ consecration ” which the Gospel 
enjoins, and this agreement suffices for our present 
purpose. Christian consecration comprehends the 
whole man and all that pertains to him—his facul¬ 
ties, his time, his property—all, even in the most 
secular pursuits, must thenceforward be a “ service 
as to the Lord and not to men.” The faith, on 
which the divine acceptance of the consecration is 
conditioned, is a vital and working principle. The 
“ perfect love,” which follows, “ fulfills the law,” be¬ 
cause it is essentially practical as well as “ full of 
peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.” Hence the revival 
of primitive Christianity, which we assume to be a 
characteristic of our day, is attended with a great 
increase of religious enjoyment and zeal and work. 

This is a natural, an inevitable result. A fervid, 
joyous, religious spirit will spontaneously be a 
working one. Protestantism has greatly advanced 
in lay work within our own generation. New 
methods of lay labor have, indeed, called for more 


16 Christian Work and Consolation. 

lay energy; but what has created these new meth¬ 
ods? What but the increased force of religious 
life, produced by its increased confidence and joy? 
Faith “ works by love and love is the most po¬ 
tent moral power of the universe. In the pulpit 
or out of the pulpit a joyous, confiding, loving 
spirit is an invincible power. It animates the feat¬ 
ures, it tunes the very voice, it kindles the heart of 
the evangelic laborer. It irradiates him with a halo 
of magnetic cheerfulness which cannot fail to at¬ 
tract all who are around him. “ The joy of the 
Lord is your strength,” says a prophet, and this 
joy comes of a sense of entire harmony with God— 
entire consecration and faith. Many a man of real 
talent fails through a whole ministerial life because 
of an unhappy “ manner.” Many a parent fails of 
the conversion of his children, and even sends them 
forth, at last, disbelieving, if not disgusted with re¬ 
ligion, because of his own lack of the “ sweetness 
and light ” with which his piety should have en¬ 
deared and illuminated his home. It is, then, a 
blessed reform that the Churches are passing'through 
in this new era of Christian life—this era of spirit¬ 
ual joy and of the “ full assurance of faith.” 

“ Lay activity,” “ lay evangelism,” “ lay co-oper¬ 
ation ; ” these are phrases which have had, within 
a few years, a strikingly increased currency among 
us. They indicate much more than they express; 
they indicate the new epoch of lay Christian work 


Lay Activity in Church Work. 17 

which is to hasten the evangelization of the world. 
To the best of Christian thinkers the long delay 
of the universal triumph of the Gospel must be a 
matter of perplexity. There would seem to be 
something essentially defective in our ecclesiastical 
organizations as the reason of this apparent failure. 
That defect may possibly be found precisely here— 
the too exclusive confinement of the labors of 
Christian propagandism to official, to clerical in¬ 
strumentality—the fact that the great mass of 
Christians have not been sufficiently taught and 
trained for practical work in the Church. 

There is danger, we admit, of an opposite error. 
We cannot be too careful in guarding the divinely 
appointed functions of the Church. The ministry 
is not a priesthood, but it is more; it is a ministry . 
According to Scripture it must stand as long as the 
Church stands; without it, without its due profes¬ 
sional or intellectual preparation, and its habitual 
pastoral responsibility, Church work, and all Church 
life, would, sooner or later, degenerate into either 
fanaticism or inanimation. Quakerism is, at least, 
a partial exemplification of the fact. But increased, 
even universal and intense, lay activity need not 
interfere with the official pastorate. It may be 
made entirely and powerfully subsidiary to it. It 
may be made to gravitate around it and to mightily 
abet and invigorate it. This has been the case 

quite invariably in England., Scotland, America, 
2 


18 Christian Work and Consolation. 

and Australia, where lay co-operation has become 
conspicuous in late years. Never has the regular 
ministry been better recognized than in these coun¬ 
tries, within the period of modern “ revivals ” and 
of increased lay activity. 

On the other hand, we have only to look to the 
continental Churches of Europe for a proof of the 
contrary result of the contrary policy. In the 
Protestant Churches of the Continent there has 
been little or no encouragement given to lay evan¬ 
gelical work since the first enthusiasm of the Ref¬ 
ormation subsided. Church work has been there 
almost exclusively official, clerical; the laity have 
been mere hearers, spectators in the evangelical 
field, not even giving their money directly, but 
indirectly through the State treasury, by taxes. 
What has been the result ? The Churches have 
been slowly dying for generations. Symptoms of 
remaining life have been merely sporadic. The 
ministry has had all things in its own hands, under 
the State authority, and has watchfully repressed 
any important lay attempts to revive the Church. 
This policy has reacted almost fatally on the minis¬ 
try itself. It has been losing its moral power over 
the people, and, at the same time, losing its rela¬ 
tive importance in the State. The continental 
Protestant clergy are now poorly supported, are 
invidiously treated by the State, and, by conse¬ 
quence, have generally lost their old social impor- 


Lay Activity in Church Work. 


19 


tance; they are no more influential in society ex¬ 
cept in rare cases of intellectual pre-eminence or 
literary reputation. The spectacle of their actual 
social status is, indeed, deplorable, and becomes 
more so every year. It would be intolerable to An¬ 
glican and American pastors. Meanwhile, through¬ 
out England, Scotland, and America, the social, 
the financial, and the official status of the ministry 
is continually advancing. 

Why? Obviously it is because the people at 
large have augmented interest in religion. And 
why this interest ? Obviously it is, to a great ex¬ 
tent, owing to the increase of lay labor and lay re¬ 
sponsibility. Silence your laymen, shut up your 
Sunday-schools, discontinue your popular devo¬ 
tional meetings; in other words, do as the conti¬ 
nental clergy of Europe have done, and you will 
soon be in their condition. The logic of the sub¬ 
ject is as clear as light. Set your people at work 
all around you, and they will soon love that work, 
and love you for your work’s sake. This is human 
nature ; but, still better, it is Christian nature. 

Did not Christianity start in this way? It had, 
indeed, its “ official ” apostles, with their miracu¬ 
lous power over life and death, over men and de¬ 
mons ; but the chief power that gave it triumph 
through the Roman world was its aggregate spirit¬ 
ual energy, put forth by the mass of its humble but 
consecrated people. Every saint was then a “ wit- 


20 Christian Work and Consolation. 

ness” for Christ. The common people, dispersed 
by the persecutions, told every-where the story of 
the cross, and every-where the cross rose radiant 
and invincible amid the darkness of universal hea¬ 
thenism, until the classic mythology vanished be¬ 
fore it, until it flamed out in the heavens before the 
eyes of Constantine, and the imperial persecutors, 
the Senate, the army, the throne, succumbed to its 
power. The ministry was great in these triumphs, 
but it was comparatively small amid the universal 
labors, heroism, and martyrdom of the Church— 
the devoted, suffering, triumphant people. And 
how the people loved and died for the ministry! 
May God restore those old victorious times again, 
and right speedily! 

This is what we need: the whole Church roused 
to work and prayer; the whole Christian world set 
in motion for the final overthrow of the powers of 
darkness; the whole Christian population ordered 
with resounding trumpets out of camp and forward 
on the march. The layman of superiority ordered 
to his place and work; the man of mediocrity as¬ 
signed to his; the man of inferiority admonished 
that even he must find his work and do it with his 
might, or be cast “ into outer darkness,” according 
to the parable of the “ talents.” Bring the universal 
Church to this, and you will save the universal 
race forthwith. We have failed just here, and the 
cross of Christ bears the reproach of our failure. 


Lay Activity in Primitive Church. 21 


III. 


LAY ACTIVITY IN THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH. 
HE increase, in our day, of lay activity in 



-*■- Church work, we have said, is a revival of a 
characteristic idea of the primitive Church. The 
great Reformers, both German and Helvetian, knew 
the importance of this idea, and taught it in their 
doctrine of the “ Priesthood of the People ”—a 
doctrine which was, with them, perfectly reconcil¬ 
able with a distinctly organized ministry. They 
denied that Christianity had any technical, or cler¬ 
ical, priesthood, and they thus struck a disastrous 
blow at the overshadowing ecclesiasticism of Rome. 
They asserted the common priesthood of the whole 
Church, (in accordance with St. Peter’s teaching,) 
and the high priesthood of Christ, and admitted no 
other idea of priesthood. Believing that the priest¬ 
hood is inherent in, and common to, the aggregate 
Church, and teaching that the regular official “min¬ 
istry” is a body of men to whom the Church only 
delegates, for convenience, its common work, they 
insist that this common work remains, a common 
and inherent right and responsibility of the people, 
and that the latter are bound to perform it, in one 
form or another, to their utmost ability. Mean- 


22 Christian Work and Consolation. 

while, no theologians ever taught more emphatical¬ 
ly, that God raises up and divinely calls individual 
men to meet the practical necessity of the delega¬ 
tion of this common work to a select and publicly 
authorized body of pastors, who, however, can never 
give the people a dispensation from their responsi¬ 
bility for its performance, so far as they have oppor¬ 
tunity to attend to it. This is the genuine evangel¬ 
ical theory of the subject, and the chief cause, under 
God, of the triumph and success of the primitive 
Church. 

It is astonishing that, with the Bible in our hands, 
any of us should doubt on this subject. The incep¬ 
tion of the early Church system is clear enough, in 
the Acts of the Apostles. When difficulties arose 
in the little Church, at Jerusalem, about the distri¬ 
bution of its alms, the apostles appealed to the 
people, the laity, advising them to select, from 
among themselves, men fitted to take charge of such 
matters, while they (the apostles) should give them¬ 
selves wholly to prayer and preaching. Being all 
Jews, or Jewish proselytes, these first Christians 
naturally turned to their antecedent usages for ex¬ 
amples or rules in their new circumstances. Some 
order, or system, had become necessary in the in¬ 
fant Christian cause; and, with the selection of 
officers, as requested by the apostles, they needed 
forms and regulations of the offices. Now, notice 
particularly, the fact, that they did not turn to their 


Lay Activity in Primitive Church. 23 

old temple system, the Levitical, or priestly, system 
of their nation, for these examples, but to the more 
popular, the especially lay system of their syna¬ 
gogue—the synagogue which is never mentioned 
in the writings of Moses, and which was a sort of 
“town hall,” an institution for the convenience of 
the provincial towns and city suburbs of the Jews, 
where could assemble on the Sabbath such of the 
people as could not conveniently go up to the Tem¬ 
ple at Jerusalem. For the divine system of the 
Jews was represented at the Temple; there the 
priesthood appeared. The priests had their own 
towns; the synagogue was eminently the assem¬ 
bling place of the people, and its proceedings were 
conducted by the laity. An “ old man ” was usual¬ 
ly elected to preside; a younger man was elected 
to take charge of the order, alms, etc., of the assem¬ 
bly. The law and the prophets were read in it by 
laymen, after which the presiding “ old man ” gave 
out the word, (as reported in the book of Acts,) “ If 
any man has a word of exhortation let him say on,” 
and the laity in general could thus share in the 
exercises. The old man, or “elder,” was, in our 
Greek Scriptures, called presbyter, a synonymous 
word; the younger man, or “ servant,” was called, 
in Greek, deacon , a synonymous word. They were 
both designated to office by the imposition of hands, 
a ceremony never used in the consecration of the 
Jewish priests, (for these were anointed like kings,) 


24 Christian Work and Consolation. 

but used in . all municipal appointments to office 
among the Jews. 

When a number of synagogues arose in the large 
cities or provinces, their officers, naturally enough, 
met together occasionally for the consideration of 
business interesting them all. On these occasions 
one of the most venerable of the “ elders ” was ap¬ 
pointed to preside; he was called “ superintend¬ 
ent”—in the Greek Scriptures the synonymous 
word Episcopos was used; in our translation the 
Anglo-Saxon Bisckop , or Bishop , is etymologically 
the same word. He was not a prelate, but accord¬ 
ing to an old Latin phrase, primus inter pares —first 
among equals. 

Thus we see the simple historical genesis of the 
whole Christian order, or polity. It had a lay ori¬ 
gin ; it was all, except the apostolate, borrowed from 
the lay system of the synagogue, and claimed no 
sanction from the priestly system of the Temple— 
the Levitical order. That corrupt tendency, (nat¬ 
ural, perhaps, to power and office,) which developed 
at last into the immense, overshadowing ecclesiasti- 
cism of Romanism, soon made imposition of hands, 
or ordination, a “ sacrament,” and the offices of 
deacon, and presbyter, and bishop, divine “ orders,” 
indispensable to Church validity, and invested with 
mysterious if not magical powers. The apostolic 
Church exemplified them, but never enjoined them. 

When the first Church at Jerusalem adopted 


Lay Activity in Primitive Church. 25 

these arrangements, they selected “ Stephen, and 
Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, 
and Parmenas, and Nicolas;” these were all lay¬ 
men, but they were evangelical workmen, and even 
worked miracles; and the record immediately adds, 
that “ the word of God increased ; and the number 
of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem greatly.” 
Stephen and Philip, we know, became signally use¬ 
ful and historical; they preached as our lay preach¬ 
ers do ; but they preached as all laymen, of any gift 
of speech, preached in those days. For what was 
preaching then ? It was not the formal discourse 
of later times; it was the telling of the “story of 
the cross; ” it was the predication, promulgation, 
of the new faith, in any and every way possible— 
mostly in a colloquial way. The formal sermon, 
with its “firstly,” “secondly,” and “thirdly,” was 
not known till hundreds of years later under Origen. 
Philip “ preached,” says the record, and at one time 
to but one hearer, in the chariot of the Ethiopian 
nobleman, and thus founded, says tradition, the 
Ethiopian Church. Stephen preached gloriously 
before the tribunal which condemned him at Jeru¬ 
salem, and made the concluding prayer of his serv¬ 
ice under the pelting missiles of his murderers. 
The first Christian martyr was pre-eminently a lay 
preacher. 

Thus the idea of lay activity pervades the whole 
structure of primitive Christianity. Even women 


26 Christian Work and Consolation. 


were active in Christian work, notwithstanding the 
cautions necessary, according to Paul, not to pro¬ 
voke too much the prevalent Oriental prejudices re¬ 
garding them. Paul recommended to the Churches 
the deaconess Phoebe; and for several centuries 
deaconesses were kept up, and even ordained , in 
the Greek Church. 

Neander, one of the best of Church historians, 
says that “The Jewish antithesis, of clergy and 
laity, was, at first, unknown among Christians; and 
it was only as men fell back from the evangelical to 
the Jewish point of view that the idea of the gen¬ 
eral Christian priesthood of all believers gave place, 
more or less completely, to that of the special priest¬ 
hood or clergy.” 

We have given this historical argument, not to 
favor any particular form of lay labor, but in favor 
of the general idea. It is, we repeat, an apostolic 
idea—an epochal idea—and, if rightly revived, it 
will make a new era in modern Church history. 
Its revival in our times seems to be a divine in¬ 
spiration touching the inmost consciousness of the 
Church, and awakening within it the conviction 
that the primitive consecration to Church work 
must be restored, as a consequence of personal con¬ 
secration to Christ; that this is the one thing need¬ 
ful for the completion of the great Reformation; 
that this alone can meet the exigencies of modern 
Christendom; that in this can alone be found the 


Lay Activity in Primitive Church. 27 

reaction which shall defeat and dispel the skepti¬ 
cism and worldliness that now so generally menace 
Christianity—that such a reaction must be sought 
not in speculation, but in action. Christian scholars 
have their task, indisputably, in regard to the new 
forms of unbelief, but there is no power on earth, 
no conceivable demonstration of Christianity, equal 
to that of a thorough and universal embodiment of 
it in Church life and labor. Set all the Church 
praying, preaching, working, and it will become to 
its foes “ terrible as an army with banners; ” and 
will, thenceforth, go on, triumphantly marching 
round the world. 

An English journal says: “There is a Church in 
Kobe, Japan, the standard of admission to which is 
probably quite as high as that of any Church in any 
Christian land. Of the twenty male members of 
this Church, thirteen go out, as lay preachers, to six 
stations, every week, and four more every month. 
Every man, not prevented by age or other in¬ 
firmities, is pledged to active lay effort, at his own 
charges; and this pledge is made a condition of 
admission to membership.” This Church has evi¬ 
dently caught the primitive idea of the relation of 
the laity to Church work. 

We are inclined to think that evangelical foreign 
missions, generally, have more scriptural usages, in 
this respect, than Churches in our domestic fields. 
Their local exigencies suggest these usages more, 


28 Christian Work and Consolation. 

perhaps, than any theory of the apostolic constitu¬ 
tion of Christianity. They are not the less apostolic, 
however, and the example is worthy of the imitation 
of our older religious communities. The Baptists, 
so successful among the Karens, have succeeded 
mostly by such lay labors. The Wesleyans, in the 
South Sea Islands, have accomplished nine tenths 
of their remarkable triumphs in the same manner. 
They trained nearly all their converts to active Chris¬ 
tian labors ; and, from King George downward, their 
male laity, who had any capacity for public speak¬ 
ing, were commissioned and sent forth, from island 
to island, on Sundays, as lay or “local” preachers. 
No Church can be thus trained and be unsuccessful 
in any land, heathen or civilized. The weakest one 
in Christendom would become strong and trium¬ 
phant, if conducted on this apostolic method. 

“Ye are my witnesses, saith the Lord.” He said 
it through one of the greatest of his official wit¬ 
nesses, Isaiah, the “ Messianic prophetbut he said 
it to his people, the “ common people.” Indispu¬ 
tably the living ministry is, next to the revealed 
word, the appointed, the perpetual, witness of di¬ 
vine truth in the world. It is armed with divine 
sanctions; it has indefeasible rights and functions; 
and the Church that endeavors to do without it 
must, sooner or later, decline, and at last die out. 
But, on the other hand, the Church that repudiates 
the witnessing function of the people—the “ priest- 


Lay Activity in Primitive Church. 29 

hood of the people,” as Luther and the other Re¬ 
formers called it—sooner or later becomes a mere 
system of churchism , of ecclesiasticism, rather than 
of Christianity. The two should be co-operative, 
the unofficial one an adjunct to the official; other¬ 
wise they both degenerate. 

Such was primitive Christianity; and this fact is 
the chief solution of the problem of the marvelous 
success of the original Church—that sublimp prob¬ 
lem which the skeptical historian, Gibbon, endeav¬ 
ored, so elaborately, to explain away, in order to 
disparage Christianity. He mentions the early lay 
activity indeed, and his main purpose was to show 
that the preternatural influence, claimed by Chris¬ 
tianity as the efficient cause of its success, is a 
fallacy; but, as that divine power works, according 
to the scheme of the Gospel, through human instru¬ 
mentality, the true question is, In what form was 
the divine influence so wondrously effective? The 
real historical answer is, that it was in the co-oper¬ 
ative activity of an official ministry and a universal 
lay priesthood. “Ye are,” said Peter, “a peculiar 
people,” “a royal priesthood"— a peculiar people 
because a royal priesthood. 

We have seen what the sacred history says on 
the subject, as recorded by Luke in the Acts. The 
laymen selected by the people, and sanctioned by 
the apostles, to attend to the alms and other tem¬ 
poralities of the Church, in order that the apostles 


30 Christian Work and Consolation. 

might attend exclusively to their own superior 
work as its founders, were thus designated to spe¬ 
cial lay work. But we immediately learn that these 
laymen, and their lay brethren generally, were heart¬ 
ily at work in the spiritual as well as temporal inter¬ 
ests of the incipient Church, the common brother¬ 
hood. And what was the result? Not only the 
“ word of God increased, the number of the disciples 
being multiplied in Jerusalem greatly,” but now 
arose a very natural consequence, the enemy was 
alarmed, and persecution began; but against whom? 
Against the Church in general, with the apostles at 
its head, unquestionably; but against these lay la¬ 
borers in particular, for here was a special thing 
against Stephen most particularly, for he was ap¬ 
parently the leader of the lay-workers. All the 
parties of the enemy, all sects of the Jews, arose 
against him—“the Libertines, and Cyrenians, and 
Alexandrians, and them of Cilicia and of Asia, 
disputing with Stephen .” The persecution raged, 
and soon Stephen became its first victim, forever 
glorious as the protomartyr of Christianity. The 
Church is dispersed abroad, but not the apostles; 
they are needed yet at the head-quarters to guide 
all things in the new exigency. Philip is proclaim¬ 
ing the Cross in Samaria, and a great “ reforma¬ 
tion ” sets in there. As soon as possible the apostles, 
concealed or sheltered at Jerusalem, sent out Peter 
and John to the scene. So the new faith has burst 


Lay Activity in Primitive Church. 31 

the geographical limits of the old Judaism, and the 
Gospel has entered triumphantly the Gentile world ; 
and even the apostles seem at first hardly to know 
how to credit the glorious fact. Under the guid¬ 
ance and governance of the apostles all possible 
talents of the Christian people were thus used, in 
all possible ways, for the outspread of the faith; and 
the Gospel was thus diffused speedily over the Ro¬ 
man empire, and over the known world. 


32 Christian Work and Consolation. 


IV. 

TEXTS FROM RUSKIN AND CHALMERS. 

< ( '-pO read, to think, to love, to hope, to pray, 
J- these are things that make men happy. 
They have power to do these things; they never 
will have power to do more. The world’s prosper¬ 
ity or adversity depends upon our knowing and 
teaching these few things ; but upon iron and glass, 
steam and electricity, in no wise.” So says Ruskin, 
with considerable truth, but with the need of con¬ 
siderable qualification. The writings of few living 
men have afforded more numerous or more pre¬ 
cious contributions to the intellectual currency of 
the day. Brilliant coins of his are in almost uni¬ 
versal circulation. He has prompted many a young 
and sensitive soul to generous aspirations and high 
thought, not only in his favorite specialty of art, 
but in matters of taste, literature, and morals gener¬ 
ally. A most suggestive writer is he, and we wish 
his books were in the hands of all our young literary 
aspirants, notwithstanding the qualification which 
his oracular or absolute way of speaking requires. 

To “read” is, indeed, one of “the things that 
make men happy.” Gibbon said that, if the alter¬ 
native were imposed upon him, to choose the seep- 


Texts from Ruskin and Chalmers. 33 

ters and treasures of the world, on the one hand, or 
his books on the other, he would decide for the 
latter. Montesquieu affirmed that there was no 
chagrin or trouble that he could not find effective 
refuge from in the sanctuary of his library. There 
are few intellectual men who would not indorse 
these testimonies. 

To think is a still higher happiness, though not 
so generally practicable in the sense of original or 
creative thought—the kind that yields the felici¬ 
tous consciousness of life and power to which Rus¬ 
kin alludes. To think profoundly is the hardest 
work in the world ; but to the trained or habitual 
thinker it is one of the highest enjoyments. It is 
the process of the acquisition of truth, and what 
function of the soul can be higher or happier than 
this? Lessing declared that, if God should offer 
him the privilege of attaining knowledge by imme¬ 
diate intuition, rather than by the labor of study, 
he would pray to be left with the latter necessity, 
for the happiness of study more than compensates 
its labor. And he was right; God’s method must 
be right, and this is God’s method ; God has given 
us intuitions only to start with in the acquisition 
of truth. Logic, in probable as well as in mathe¬ 
matical reasoning, only proceeds from axioms or 
intuitions; the rest of the process is work; and, 
though the hardest work known to man, yet is it 

full of conscious power and joy, 

3 


34 Christian Work and Consolation. 

The other “ things that make men happy,” as 
mentioned by Ruskin, will hardly be questioned— 
to “ love, to hope, to pray,” they are the very best 
things for man in the moral sphere of his life. A 
loving heart may have much to suffer even by its 
affections, by the disappointments or defeats of 
love; but love is in its own essence felicitous, and 
its very griefs are sweet and salutary. Hope has 
its alloys, and the suffering of “ hope deferred ” has 
been proverbial from the earliest ages; but hope 
deferred is infinitely better than no hope. And 
there is no condition of human probation on this 
planet where hope may not be attained by prayer 
—prayer, to which Christianity subordinates, in a 
certain sense, the boundless resources of God him¬ 
self for the help of his most suffering, yet most 
noble creature, man. Most noble, though most 
suffering, for, as Pascal says, in that fragmentary 
but immortal monument of intellect, his “ Pen- 
sees,” “ Man, though the feeblest reed in nature, is 
a thinking reed ; it is not necessary that the whole 
universe should arm itself to crush him, for a vapor, 
a drop of water, can do so; but, if the universe 
should crush him, yet is he nobler than that which 
slays him, for he knows that he dies, and the uni¬ 
verse knows nothing of the advantage it has over 
him.” 

Yes, these are indeed “ things that make men 
happy.” The fine English thinker is correct thus 


Texts from Ruskin and Chalmers. 35 

far; and a grateful fact it is that “ men have power 
to do these things/’ But every remaining clause 
of the citation needs qualification. It is not true 
that “ men will never have power to do more.” 
They have power to do more; they have always 
had power to do more ; and it is by doing more 
that they will bring this world to its right condition 
at last. 

The world does depend upon “iron and glass, 
steam and electricity,” as well as upon “ reading, 
thinking, loving, hoping, and praying;” and we 
should bless God that it does. The toilers in the 
fields and workshops of the world are true workers 
for the world’s prosperity. The inventor, especial¬ 
ly, is among the best benefactors of humanity. 
England’s future depends upon steam, and may yet 
depend upon electricity. Should the predicted fail¬ 
ure of her coal mines be a fact, she must find in 
electricity, or some analogous means, a new motor, 
or fall from her rank among the great civilizing 
powers of the earth. Does not such a fact involve 
“the world’s prosperity or adversity?” 

Was Watt’s invention of the steam-engine no 
contribution to the world’s prosperity? Its present 
application, though but partial compared with its 
prospective uses, has been estimated to be equiva¬ 
lent to the manual capability for work of five plan¬ 
ets like ours. 

Ruskin would have us “ think ” as a means of 


36 Christian Work and Consolation. 

happiness, but thinking, to be advantageous, must 
be productive; and what thinking has been more 
so than that bestowed by Watt on his own inven¬ 
tion ? It is a result of long and scientific thought. 
It never could have been achieved without scientific 
thought. Watt, early perceiving that he did not 
possess this adequately for his great conception, 
threw himself into a Scotch university, and studied 
under one of the best chemists of his age—studied 
the laws of heat under Professor Black, himself one 
of the greatest original discoverers. The steam- 
engine involved profound knowledge in both phys¬ 
ics and mathematics. It is an embodiment of both 
the genius of Watt and the science of Black, to 
which, if we may reverently say it, the Almighty 
One superadded somewhat of his own omnipotence ; 
and thus was given to the world the greatest ma¬ 
terial instrument of its improvement. 

Gutenberg, Fulton, Whitney, Arkwright, Morse, 
and Howe have given similar momentum to civili¬ 
zation, to civilization in its very best material form 
—the practical arts which ameliorate human life. 
Far-seeing men presume now to hope, as we have 
intimated, that, by such improvements, the mini¬ 
mum of labor, and thereby the maximum of leisure 
for more refined occupations, may at last be at¬ 
tained ; and the race, no longer subject to servile 
toil, be free for that moral and intellectual culture 
which is obviously its noblest function. 


Texts from Ruskin and Chalmers. 37 

Thus it is by “ iron, glass, steam, and electric¬ 
ity ”—in other words, by material improvements, 
the results of hard study and hard toil—that the 
race is at last to attain a condition in which it can 
more readily and universally “ read, think, love, 
hope, and pray.” 

Meanwhile, as it advances toward that condition, 
it may seem, to a narrow-minded observer, only to 
recede from it. With every “ labor-saving ” inven¬ 
tion there may seem to be only an increase of la¬ 
bor. To a clearer vision this, however, is but a 
proof of the beneficence of such improvements. 
By facilitating the supply of human needs or con¬ 
veniences they increase the demand for them. 
These thus become more diffused. The privations 
of the lower classes are diminished, and their homes 
are furnished with comforts which were, before, the 
possession only of the higher conditions of life. Of 
course, therefore, labor is multiplied in spite of 
“ labor-saving inventions,” and, indeed, by them. 
It is a consolatory fact; it is a process of ameliora¬ 
tion ; and, with whatever incidental evils, it must 
go on with every new invention, till the resources 
of nature, for the improvement of human life, shall 
be so far developed as to yield their maximum sup¬ 
ply, and yield it to the minimum of toil. This is 
the end to which all true civilization tends. This 
is the divine order of the world. It is for this that 
men are placed here as “ thinking, loving, hoping, 


38 Christian Work and Consolation. 

praying ” beings. Let them not then despise “ iron, 
glass, steam, or electricity,” but thoughtfully, lov¬ 
ingly, hopefully, and prayerfully appropriate them 
as God’s benedictions. Christian consecration is 
not consecration of the soul exclusive of its exterior 
conditions: it is consecration of both itself and its 
conditions. 

Were we asked, What is the summary condition 
of human happiness in this world ? we should be in¬ 
clined to reply that (presupposing Ruskin’s specifi¬ 
cations) the supreme one is work. It is not work, 
we have affirmed, that is meant in the Mosaic mal¬ 
ediction on the fall of man. It is by genuine work, 
especially thought embodied in modes of work, as 
we have just shown, that the curse is to be rem¬ 
edied, and invention supersede toil. Thomas Jeffer¬ 
son (borrowing, however, from an older authority) 
says that he who can show us how to make two 
spears of grass grow where only one could grow be¬ 
fore, is a benefactor of all mankind. We hear much 
of the evils of overwork, and there certainly is a 
class of eager men, who thus destroy themselves; 
but could the statistics of civilized life be accurately 
given, in this respect, we would find infinitely more 
suffering from deficient than from excessive labor. 
Adam Clarke says of the maxim about too many 
irons in the fire, “ that it is an abominable old lie.” 
“ Have them all in,” he says, “shovel, tongs, poker, 
and all.” All proverbs need qualification, his own 


Texts from Ruskin and Chalmers. 39 

as well as the one he would correct. It is all im¬ 
portant to understand well the complementary rela¬ 
tion of “ work and play.” One thing, nevertheless, 
may be asserted, almost as absolutely or oracularly 
as any of the sayings of Ruskin, namely, that who¬ 
soever is thoroughly occupied can never be thor¬ 
oughly unhappy. Presupposing some degree of 
wisdom and virtue, labor is the law of happiness, 
and beneficent labor, especially in the forms of re¬ 
ligious usefulness, its supreme law. Many a man 
to whom life is a grievous mystery and the world 
an arid desert, would find both luminous with the 
glory of God if he would but plunge into useful 
work—especially work consecrated by prayer. 

Chalmers was a mighty worker as well as a pro¬ 
found thinker. He was quickened by reading Wil- 
berforce’s “ Practical View of Christianity,” to an 
energetic religious life, and, not content with his 
masterly pulpit efforts—like his splendid Astronom¬ 
ical Discourses, which commanded so much interest 
among the highest minds of his times—he devoted 
himself to all kinds of hard work for the poor and 
neglected classes, holding meetings for them in 
suburban halls and private houses, and studying the 
best applications of economical science for the relief 
of their sufferings. His practical zeal flamed out 
often in powerful exhortations to Christian men to 
work—to work mightily; to wrestle with the evils 
of the day like men in battle. “ O man,” he ex- 


40 Christian Work and Consolation. 

claims, in one of his writings, “ O man, live for 
something! Do good, and leave behind you a 
monument of virtue that the storms of time can 
never destroy.’' 

Work, it is the legitimate, the normal function of 
man. It is not, we repeat, the “primeval curse,” 
as some do vainly and profanely teach. The divine 
record says that unfallen man was ordered to till 
the garden of Eden itself. Man was made a hus¬ 
bandman when he was made a man. Few things 
could have more surely doomed him to fall than 
perpetual idleness. Labor does not more certainly 
make the muscles grow, and the brain become vig¬ 
orous and inventive, than it develops and energizes 
the higher faculties. 

Let us not delude ourselves with the thought that 
we cannot do effective, and even grand moral work, 
without ostensibly grand means or opportunities. 
“Ostensibly grand,” we say; for all opportunities 
of moral usefulness are intrinsically grand—grand 
in their results to souls, grand in their eternal com¬ 
pensations to ourselves. “ Write your name,” con¬ 
tinues Chalmers, in speaking of what are considered 
the humble or ordinary means of usefulness, “ write 
your name in kindness, love, and mercy, on the 
hearts of thousands you come in contact with year 
by year, and you will never be forgotten. No, your 
words, your deeds, will be as legible on the hearts 
you leave behind, as the stars on the brow of 


Texts from Ruskin and Chalmers. 41 

the evening. Good deeds shine as brightly on the 
earth as the stars of heaven.” He speaks eloquent¬ 
ly but logically also. Is not his thought that of the 
old Hebrew prophet who declares that they who are 
“ wise [wise in this way] shall shine as the bright¬ 
ness of the firmament; and they that turn many to 
righteousness, as the stars for ever and ever.” That 
is sublime—worthy of the speech of God uttered 
by man. You, even you, humblest child of God, 
may thus make your obscure life sublime. In the 
circle of your home, in the limited range of your 
neighborhood, in the Sunday-school, the prayer¬ 
meeting, even in the privation and patient suffering 
of your sick-chamber, you may preach the consola¬ 
tions of your religion, and show forth the glory of 
God your Saviour—“ writing your name on the 
hearts” of all who are within your reach. 

Many of us have larger and, therefore, more 
responsible opportunities. The consecration and 
amenability of Christian men, in secular life, are 
identical in principle with the consecration and 
amenability required of their pastors, and of the 
missionaries whom they send to the ends of the 
earth. In calling you into his kingdom on earth, 
God called you to live, to work, with entire conse¬ 
cration to himself. You must, indeed, provide for 
your family—and so must the pastor and the mis¬ 
sionary; but having done this, your gains should 
be consecrated to the promotion of his cause, and 


42 Christian Work and Consolation. 

every kind of usefulness in the world appertains to 
his cause, and should be done for his glory. This 
was the theory of life in the primitive Church, as 
we have seen; and by it the early Church lived out 
the Gospel so effulgently, that the splendid and 
powerful heathenism of the whole Roman world 
dissolved before it. But how has Christendom fall¬ 
en from the original faith in this respect! How has 
the actual standard of Christian life in that age, be¬ 
come but the ideal standard of our age! What 
does Christendom more need than the restoration 
of the old standard—the entire consecration of sec¬ 
ular life to personal holiness, and personal work for 
the Church. 

Think for a moment what energies, what exhaust¬ 
less resources, would be developed by such an idea 
were it once rendered concrete throughout the Chris¬ 
tian world. There would be no more lack of labor¬ 
ers ; no more lack of money; no more lack of enthu¬ 
siasm, of heroism. The mouths of gainsayers would 
be shut; the sanctity and beauty of Christian life 
would soon preach down triumphantly the infidelity 
of Christendom. Doubters and scorners would bow 
before such demonstrations; and the augmented 
means of the Church would soon overpower the re¬ 
sistance of the heathen world. This is the grand 
desideratum. There is no possibility of exaggera¬ 
tion here. Hyperbole itself becomes literal reality 
on the theme. 


Texts from Ruskin and Chalmers. 43 

Herein do we see the nobility, the moral heroism, 
of Christian life, as implied throughout the Script¬ 
ures. The mechanic at his bench, the husband¬ 
man “ speeding his plow,” the merchant in the 
mart—let all these enter into entire consecration, 
and conduct their labors as purely for Christ as they 
do their devotions in the Church or the closet, and 
what a moral dignity would secular life attain among 
them! How would it be lifted out of its ordinary 
selfishness! How would it stretch forth its enter¬ 
prising hands to take hold on high moral achieve¬ 
ments and eternal rewards. Secular life would thus 
become sacerdotal, and we should read, not only in 
the writings of Peter and John, but in the daily life 
of Christendom, “Ye are a chosen generation—a 
royal priesthood —a peculiar people,” and the Church 
would sing, as the apocalyptic apostle prophetically 
heard it, “ Thou . . . hast redeemed us to God . . . 
and hast made us unto our God kings and priests: 
and we shall reign on the earth.” 

Not only moral dignity and moral power would 
be the result of such consecration in ordinary life, 
but the highest felicity possible on this planet. 
There is no happiness on earth greater than that 
of doing good. Self-denial, for this purpose, is, as 
we have said, the highest self-interest. Wealth, 
power, honor, these cannot make you happy, except 
with temporary excitement and illusion; but these, 
consecrated to good ends, how they become trans- 


44 Christian Work and Consolation. 

muted into divine realities, divine gifts, for divine 
results! A rich man can build a monument of use¬ 
fulness, in a college, a church, or asylum, by which 
he may not only perpetuate his name for genera¬ 
tions, with a purer fame than that of statesmen or 
victors, but in which he may live on, when in his 
grave, a more effective life than ever he had in the 
flesh, and be thus, age after age, adding to his re¬ 
ward in heaven. Is not this enviable happiness, O 
wearied man of the mart? Would it not raise thy 
life out of the sordid selfishness in which money 
now fails to make thee content? Would it not en¬ 
hance every other enjoyment that money can afford 
thee? Would it not console thy declining years 
and thy dying hours? Make haste, then, to make 
it thine own. Look around thee for the right op¬ 
portunity. On thy knees consecrate thy property, 
and ask, “ Lord, what wilt thou have me to do ? ” 
Thy Lord will show thee what to do; and, when 
heart and flesh fail thee, he will say, “Well done, 
good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy 
of thy Lord.” 


Wealth—The Old Charter-house. 45 


V. 

WEALTH—THE OLD CHARTER-HOUSE. 

^^ "TV /F ORE than thirty million dollars were given 
-L*-*- by private individuals for education in the 
United States during the first half of the last 
decade.” The estimate seems hardly credible, not¬ 
withstanding the continual intimations in our public 
journals of this kind of liberality. So frequent and 
munificent have its examples become that foreign 
travelers among us, and foreign journals, have come 
to speak of them as a sort of national character¬ 
istic ; and we may well be proud of the fact. It 
proves not only that great fortunes, admitting of 
such liberality, are readily made in our prosperous 
country, but that our institutions tend to enlight¬ 
ened and patriotic views of the best uses of super¬ 
abundant wealth. 

We doubt not, also, that this unparalleled gen¬ 
erosity is prompted by a profound sense of the 
necessity of powerful educational means for the na¬ 
tional welfare. History does not record a case of 
equal urgency with our own in this respect. Never 
has humanity, in its march forward, entered a field 
more magnificent than our national domain ; never 


46 Christian Work and Consolation. 

has there been a nation of whom it could be affirmed 
more soberly, in the words of the dying Madame de 
Stael to George Ticknor, “ The future of the world 
is yours.” Men who help to educate and build up 
this nation are working for all humanity and all 
ages. It is magnificent work, and we cannot wonder 
that it takes hold, irresistibly, on the best ambition 
of large-hearted citizens. 

The growth of our population is astonishing, and 
we speak of it with boastful exultation ; but it in¬ 
volves serious liabilities, demanding gigantic efforts 
for education. We are proud of our fifty millions 
of to-day; but how few of us think soberly of the 
hundred millions which are to be seen within our 
limits by most of us now living; of the still more 
startling fact, that in our households are thou¬ 
sands of children who will see our population sur¬ 
pass the whole present population of Europe ! 
What a work has such a nation to do in education! 
How can our provisions for this almost incredible 
increase of souls keep pace with it? Well may rich 
patriotic citizens lavish their money on churches, 
schools, and colleges. 

Personally we do not fear this future. We be¬ 
lieve there is a divine programme for it, and that 
programme, involving the best destinies of our race 
as well as of our country, will be fulfilled. Our 
institutions, admitting of no serious popular discon¬ 
tent, and our financial resources, admitting of no 


Wealth—The Old Charter-house. 47 

exhaustion, should render us competent to meet 
the emergency, especially with the great personal 
liberality of citizens for education. Education, 
mental and moral education, is the true salvation 
of the Republic. Let her take care of her children 
and she will thus take care of herself, and not of 
herself only, but of the best destinies of the civil¬ 
ized world, for that world, according to almost uni¬ 
versal acknowledgment, is now coming fast under 
her beneficent influence. She is sending it bread 
and gold, and opening comfortable homes for its 
suffering migrating hosts. When, within the life¬ 
time of thousands of her present children, she shall 
have, on a national territory more than equal to 
that of all Europe, a population equal to the pres¬ 
ent population of all Europe—when, in other words, 
this one nation shall be about equal to all the rest 
of the civilized nations put together, what must be 
her influence upon them ? How splendid should be 
her equipment for such a future—a future not dis¬ 
tant, but really startling in its nearness! Behold, 
then, O American men of wealth, your noble mis¬ 
sion. Build up the nation with your benefactions. 
Dot it all over with intellectual light-houses, that 
the noble ship of state strike on no rocks. Fill the 
land with light, that the incoming ignorance and 
superstition of the emigrating old world may be 
dispelled like clouds as fast as they reach our 
shores. The emigrants themselves soon die off, 


48 Christian Work and Consolation. 

but their children remain for us ; let us save 
the children for the nation by education. The 
Church and the school-house are our best fortifi¬ 
cations. 

What could we not say on this devotion of pri¬ 
vate wealth to public interests! It is, as some one 
has said, creating a new category of fame, of noble 
“ immortality.” Hitherto great reputations, and 
the monuments consecrated to them, have been 
comparatively limited to certain classes; to great 
authors, great artists, great soldiers, etc. But men 
of mercantile or financial success have been prac¬ 
tically interdicted the circle of the “ immortals.” 
This proscription is to give way for a still higher 
form of renown ; mercantile and financial philan¬ 
thropists in England, and especially in America, 
are building monuments of reputation which will 
surpass those of great soldiers and politicians, if 
not of great artists and authors. George Peabody’s 
statue, in bronze, on the most conspicuous business 
place of London, commands as much interest from 
the passing thousands as that of any other man 
commemorated in London, not excepting Welling¬ 
ton’s. The people bless his memory as they pass 
it. Fame is not the noblest motive for such men, 
viewed from the Christian stand-point; it is, never¬ 
theless, no ignoble one; if it should not be sought, 
yet it inevitably follows, and men bless themselves 
by commemorating their benefactors. The world 


Wealth—The Old Charter-house. 49 

will yet come to recognize this kind of reputation 
as among the best. The names of Astor, Cooper, 
Lenox, the Stuarts, Seney, Drew, and not a few 
other citizens of New York, will live for centuries 
among their grateful countrymen, in the monu¬ 
ments of learning and philanthropy to which they 
have consecrated their wealth. Such men, as we 
have said, live on when they have gone down to their 
honored graves, and live a more strenuous life than 
they did in the flesh—forever doing good and add¬ 
ing to the rewards which heaven, as well as earth, 
awards to the doers of good. What better use can 
be made of wealth ? What better commemoration 
of a family name than its perpetual association 
with a public institution of beneficence, a monu¬ 
ment teaching a permanent lesson to the public, 
and commanding the admiration and gratitude, and 
often the grateful tears, of generations? 

But there are probably some reading these lines 
who will say, They may be relevant enough to rich 
men, but not to me. I have no means for such 
achievements. It has been said that the greatest 
heroes of the race are the unrecorded ones. The 
capabilities of wealthy Christians are indeed envi¬ 
able, and where much is given much is required. 
But the little is also required where little is 
given. If it fails of record in the world, yet it fails 
not of record in the universe. Its “ record is on 

high,” and that is enough. After all, the salvation 
4 


50 Christian Work and Consolation. 

of this nation depends chiefly upon the little con¬ 
tributions with their huge aggregates. The country 
needs, and will still more need, the liberality of all 
its people, the poor as well as the rich. And how 
admirably the provision of God, in his Church, 
meets this fact! If the poor cannot, individually, 
do great things for the public good, yet their pit¬ 
tances, given in church collections, for education, 
missions, etc., take on the form, in her hands, of 
great aggregates, and become the Archimedean 
fulcrum and lever by which she moves the moral 
world. All of us, then, have our opportunities of 
sharing in the immense work which is devolved 
upon our country. Not one of us should wish to be 
exempt from the common responsibility—a respon¬ 
sibility which may be affirmed, with all sobriety, 
to be the heaviest that ever devolved upon any 
people. And not one of us need fail of his reward. 
It is one of the sublimest teachings of Christianity, 
that whosoever giveth a cup of water in the name 
of a disciple shall have his reward. 

The name of the old “ Charter-house School,” 
London, is familiar to Methodists throughout the 
world, for Wesley received an important part of his 
early education there. It is familiar to English 
readers generally, for some of the most historical 
men of English politics and literature were its stu¬ 
dents—Addison; Steele; Blackstone, the juriscon¬ 
sult ; the great Greek scholar, Monk, Bishop of 


Wealth—The Old Charter-house. 51 

Gloucester; Thirlwall, the historian of Greece; 
Grote, the still greater Grecist; Thackeray; Lord 
Liverpool, prime minister; Lord Ellenborough, 
chief-justice; and almost innumerable others. Few 
educational institutions of England have been more 
useful. An old English writer said of Sutton, its 
founder, that he was “ the giver of the greatest gift 
in England, either in Catholic or Protestant times, 
ever bestowed by any individual.” The Charter- 
house is a splendid monument of individual char¬ 
ity, and of the utility of wealth rightly used. Its 
history affords an important lesson which, we think, 
is not a little relevant to our times, and especially 
to our country; for the use of wealth for the public 
good is becoming a noble habit of our age, and 
needs the lesson of Sutton’s example. For nearly 
three hundred years Thomas Sutton has been in 
his grave ; but he has been living, is now living, 
and will live on, for ages, in his great benefaction. 
There is something sublime in this sort of terres¬ 
trial immortality, this undying beneficence, won 
from success of “ business life.” 

Sutton became one of the richest men of his 
time, chiefly by his mercantile enterprise, and the 
skillful development of coal mines discovered on 
his country estate. Like all truly elevated souls, 
whether in mercantile or other spheres of life, he 
knew that property, beyond a certain limit—be¬ 
yond enough for the real interests of existence— 


52 Christian Work and Consolation. 

could only be a burden ; and especially to a con¬ 
scientious man, a burden of responsibility. He 
resolved, therefore, to make some signal use of his 
wealth; he proposed to purchase the old Carthu¬ 
sian Monastery, (now the Charter-house,) and con¬ 
secrate it forever to two of the best possible pur¬ 
poses ; first, as a home, or hospital, for poor old 
men ; and, second, as a school for poor scholars. 
The scholars were limited, not to the poorest boys, 
but to those “ whose parents have no estate, in 
lands, to leave them; the children of poor men that 
want means to bring them up.” Hence such youth 
as we have mentioned, of very respectable, but not 
wealthy, families, have been prepared for eminence 
there. The men, or “ poor brethren,” sheltered 
there were eighty in number, “some being maimed 
in the wars, some undone by shipwreck and mis¬ 
fortune.” And thus, for generations, a numerous 
school for boys, and a happy home for eighty 
worthy ^ old men, have been maintained by the 
good Sutton’s thoughtful liberality. 

But the particular lesson with which we wish 
to point this sketch, remains to be noticed. Sut¬ 
ton came near risking his project by at first de¬ 
signing it to be a posthumous affair—a common 
error of rich philanthropists. How many millions 
have in this manner been lost to the cause of 
charity! How many noble and otherwise success¬ 
ful lives have thus terminated in defeat through 


Wealth—The Old Charter-house. 53 

the wrangling of unscrupulous heirs, and the ex¬ 
penses of equally unscrupulous lawyers ! A good 
angel was, however, at hand to save the good 
man’s design. He had made his will, providing for 
its prosecution by his executors. Hall, Bishop of 
Exeter, was his personal friend; and England may 
be said to owe this magnificent charity to the 
Christian good sense of the Bishop. Hall, after 
pondering the matter, wrote to Sutton a character¬ 
istic letter: “I ask leave,” he said, “to hasten your 
pace a little, and to excite your Christian forward¬ 
ness to begin speedily what you have long and con¬ 
stantly vowed. You would not but do good; why 
not now ? I speak boldly; the more speed, the 
more comfort; neither are the times at our dis¬ 
posal, nor ourselves. How many have meant well 
and done nothing, and lost the crown with linger¬ 
ing! Say not, To-morrow I will give, if thou now 
have it, for thou knowest not what a day may bring 
forth. It hath been an old rule of liberality, ‘ He 
gives twice who gives quickly; ’ whereas slow 
benefits argue uncheerfulness and lose their worth. 
Who lingers his receipts is condemned as unthrifty; 
He who knoweth both hath said, ‘ It is better to 
give than to receive.’ If we are of the same spirit, 
why are we hasty in the worst and slack in the 
better ? Suffer yourself, therefore, good sir, for 
God’s sake, for the Gospel’s sake, for the Church’s 
sake, for your soul’s sake, to be stirred up by these 


54 Christian Work and Consolation. 

few lines to a resolute and speedy performing of 
your worthy intentions.” 

Sutton was too practical a business man not to 
perceive the wisdom of these counsels, and too good 
a Christian not to feel the force of the Bishop’s 
pious exhortation. He at once made up his mind 
to begin his generous work, and he was not a day 
too soon with it. He lived to see it organized ; but 
hardly was he in his grave before his next of kin, 
for whom he had provided in his will, attacked the 
scheme. But he had purchased the Charter-house, 
and had prosecuted his plan far enough to enable 
Chief-justice Coke to save it in the court. Had he 
left his fortune as a posthumous charity, we might 
never have heard of the illustrious Charter-house 
School. To-day there are five hundred youth in it, 
and eighty “ poor brethren; ” they worship daily 
in their own chapel on the premises, and they bless, 
upon their knees, the memory of their benefactor, 
whose happiness in his heavenly place may be 
heightened by their gratitude. Lord Ellenborough, 
Chief-justice of England, was so thankful for his 
education there, as a “ poor scholar,” that, when 
one of the foremost men of England, he requested, 
in his will, that his remains might be buried by the 
side of the good merchant in the chapel of the 
school; and there they rest, honored by, and hon¬ 
oring, the famous institution. At the celebration 
of the “ Founder’s Day,” annually, the assembled 


Wealth—The Old Charter-house. 55 

hundreds, who rejoice in his charity, utter, in the 
old chapel, a loud “ Amen ” to the lesson of the oc¬ 
casion, the Thirty-seventh Psalm : “ The steps of a 
good man are ordered by the Lord : and he delight- 
eth in his way. Though he fall, he shall not be 
utterly cast down: for the Lord upholdeth him 
with his hand. I have been young, and now am 
old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, 
nor his seed begging bread.” 

It is thus that generous souls can convert wealth, 
so often ruinous to its gainers and their families, 
into a magnificent instrumentality of beneficence 
for indefinite ages. It is thus that the rich man, so 
often accursed in himself and a curse to others, may 
array himself among the best benefactors of his 
race. Wealth is enviable when thus consecrated. 
In most other and higher pursuits—of literature, 
art, statesmanship, war—men are actuated by mo¬ 
tives of distinction. They are willing to sacrifice 
nearly every thing else for public recognition or 
fame. But the talent for money-making may, es¬ 
pecially in our day, take rank, as we have seen, by 
the side of genius itself in this respect. What 
fame, what immortality on earth, can be nobler 
than that which attaches to a permanent founda¬ 
tion of beneficence? What can be more useful? 
How can a man more nobly live on among his fel¬ 
lows, when he is buried out of their sight, than in 
such an institution as that which renders familiar 


56 Christian Work and Consolation. 

and dear to every Englishman to-day the honored 
name of Sutton ? Such a fact is worth volumes of 
mere dissertation on the use of money; but its les¬ 
son, against posthumous charity, is one of its most 
important aspects. What thy hand findeth to do, 
in this respect, do it now, and do it with thy might. 
Risk not thy noblest designs, and the virtue and 
the peace of thy kindred, by exposing thy property 
to the disputations and tergiversations of courts. 
Build thine own monument, as thou hast built 
thine own fortune, and go to the repose of thy 
grave assured that thou shalt never die in the 
hearts of thy countrymen. God hath given thee 
success in the labor of thy life for such noble ends. 
Thou “ shalt not die, but live,” perhaps more pro¬ 
ductively than ever in such posthumous usefulness. 
Thou canst thus “ make to thyself friends of the 
mammon of unrighteousness,” and in heaven look 
down upon the continued, beneficent results of thy 
life and rejoice therein; for, though “justified by 
faith alone,” thou shalt be “judged by thy works.” 
It is only when we come to such views and uses of 
life that we understand its real significance. Life 
is activity; without this we do not live; we sleep, 
or, at most, but dream; and “ the soul is dead that 
slumbers.” The highest law of activity is that it 
be beneficent; for this, rightly considered, presup¬ 
poses that it be pure in its motives and procedure. 
To a really beneficent life there is no dullness, no 


Wealth—The Old Charter-house. 57 

ennui. He who spends his life in doing good is 
sure to enjoy life; and (blessed paradox!) life, thus 
enjoyed, is resigned, at death, also with joy. Such 
is the prerogative of virtue. The general discon¬ 
tent with life even among the most successful; the 
incessant wail over what is called the “ mystery of 
life,” is at best an abject confession of the selfish¬ 
ness and baseness of ordinary life. It is the ever-re¬ 
curring refrain of our modern literature—our novels, 
poetry, and of even our philosophy. None feel it 
more than the selfishly wealthy. The ability to 
make money may be a God-given talent; used be¬ 
neficently it may make life felicitous and death 
not less so. “ Understandest thou what thou read- 
est?” 


58 Christian Work and Consolation. 


VI. 


THE CHRISTIAN THEORY OF LIFE. 

HAT is a striking little narrative recorded in 



1 the military life of David after his victory 
over the Amalekites, (i Sam. xxx, 24, 25,) little in 
the brevity of its record, but not small in the signif¬ 
icance of its lesson; for it involves a principle of 
large application to the Christian life. The victori¬ 
ous troops were unwilling that their brethren who 
had not been in the battle, but had guarded the 
common “ stuff” at a distance, should share in the 
spoils. David promptly rebuked them, and estab¬ 
lished forever a magnanimous rule for such cases: 
“ Who will hearken unto you,” he said, “ in this 
matter? but as his part is that goeth down to the 
battle, so shall his part be that tarrieth by the 
stuff: they shall part alike. And it was so from 
that day forward, that he made it a statute and an 
ordinance for Israel unto this day.” 

Milton says that even those who “ only stand 
and wait ” do “ also serve.” There are circum¬ 
stances in which to endure, in an exemplary way, 
may be the most effective service; and many a 
patient, loving sufferer has preached the highest 
truths of Christianity most effectively by exempli- 


The Christian Theory of Life. 59 

fying its highest virtues. Many a martyr has done 
more for the truth in a single, heroic, dying hour 
than he could have done in the largest life of relig¬ 
ious activity. 

The true theory of Christian life is, doubtless, the 
entire consecration of all ordinary as well as extra¬ 
ordinary life to the kingdom of God in the world. 
Augustine’s idea of the City of God is the right 
one; not, indeed, as the pontifical State of Rome 
interpreted and applied it, instituting a theocracy 
which was but an ecclesiastical despotism—a State 
ruled by priests, and domineering over the con¬ 
sciences and temporalities of men; maintaining its 
diplomacy in foreign courts, and arraying its troops 
in fields of battle. Assuredly the Gospel never sug¬ 
gests such a theory of Christian domination. But 
it does teach a Kingdom—a reign of Christ over his 
own consecrated subjects, a spiritual society, a di¬ 
vine commonwealth amid the dominions of earth, 
into which every regenerated soul is incorporated; 
in which he becomes a citizen. “Now therefore 
ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow- 
citizens with the saints, and of the household of 
God.” 

Without further discussing the doctrine of Lu¬ 
ther, Calvin, and the other Reformers, on what they 
called “the priesthood of the people,” and the 
parity of all saints in the kingdom of God on earth, 
we state but a prwia-facie truth of Scripture in 


60 Christian Work and Consolation. 

saying that the consecration of secular life to the 
ends of the spiritual society, to the rule of Christ 
on earth, is the fundamental idea of that society. 
A man, in becoming a Christian, comes, as we have 
insisted, out from the world ; though he must still 
remain upon it, he is no longer of it. He has dis¬ 
covered and entered a blessed spiritual world upon 
this planet; a kingdom whose sovereign is the 
“ King eternal, immortal, invisible,” and henceforth 
his supreme allegiance is to him. Whether he be 
called to preach or teach, or to follow the plow 
or strike the anvil, to go forth, like the victors of 
David, into the battle-fields of the moral world, or to 
guard the “stuff” at home, he is wholly the Lord’s ; 
all his time, all his gifts, all his being, belong to the 
Lord his sovereign. Consecration, entire consecra¬ 
tion is the characteristic of his new citizenship. 
In proportion as he fails in this he comes short of 
the evangelical theory of life. Is his gift a talent 
for money-making? It should be as thoroughly 
consecrated to the interests of the kingdom of God 
as his pastor’s gift of speech is. He is not his own ; 
he has been “ purchased with a price.” The prin¬ 
ciple of his amenability—that upon which he will 
be judged in the last day—is, as we have shown, 
identical with that upon which his pastor will then 
stand or fall. Apart from the biblical duty of pro 
viding for their families, the life of each should be 
devoted to the common interests of their common 


The Christian Theory of Life. 61 

cause. Of course, in the details of method, etc., a 
Christian secular life must vary from a purely min¬ 
isterial or missionary one; but we insist upon this 
fact of their identical consecration, and their iden¬ 
tical amenability. And we insist that thus the 
original Church understood the theory of evangel¬ 
ical life, and it was thus that it “ turned the world 
upside down,” and subdued the heathenism of the 
Roman Empire. 

It is only in this manner that they who guard the 
“ stuff” can be entitled to share the final spoils, the 
eternal rewards. A merchant or mechanic pursuing 
his secular toil, in order, after supporting his family, 
to promote the kingdom of God on earth, by the 
consecration of his gains, may thus be represented 
in the person of a missionary in the heart of India 
or China, and will share his reward in heaven. He 
is virtually in the battle, though he is taking care 
of the “ stuff” at home. He will rightfully fall into 
the mighty column of victors, which at last shall 
gather from the east and the west, the north and 
the south, and march with their trophies through 
the gates into the city amid the acclamations of 
angels. 


62 Christian Work and Consolation. 


VII. 


A TEXT FROM GOETHE—AIM IN LIFE. 
OPULAR evangelical propagandism was, then, 



-A- one of the characteristic ideas of apostolic 
Christianity; and one of the evident needs of mod¬ 
ern Christianity is the fuller restoration of the prim¬ 
itive spirit of labor. 

Virtue, in the old, classic sense of the word, meant 
energy or force. Christian zeal was in that age. 
genuine force; it was more a force than a talent; it 
was common to all believers, whether they had any 
special talent or not. Emerson says, “ There is al¬ 
ways room for a man of force, and he makes room 
for many.” Be zealous, be resolute for the truth, 
even if you cannot be eloquent for it. The genius 
of war is with the great commanders, not with the 
common troops; but there is no victory without 
the energy of the common troops. 

We must work for others if we would save our¬ 
selves. An old Chinese maxim says, “ He who 
wishes to secure the good of others has already se¬ 
cured his own.” If a barbaric heathenism taught 
such an idea, how much more does Christianity 
emphasize it! Christianity, whose Founder offered 
himself a sacrifice for the world, and, as such, a 


A Text from Goethe—Aim in Life. 63 

model for his Church for evermore! The Hebrew 
“ Preacher” says, “ He hath made every thing beau¬ 
tiful in his time ... I know that there is no good 
in them, but for a man to rejoice, and to do good 
in his life.” 

Had the primitive, the apostolic, idea of individ¬ 
ual devotion to the good of others been maintained, 
we can hardly doubt that the predicted universal 
triumph of the Gospel would long ago have been 
realized. God works by means; it would be ruin¬ 
ous to us were he to forego these means and super¬ 
sede our co-operation with him. That co-operation 
is the means of our development unto ever higher 
character. The idea of self-sacrifice, of labor for 
others, if once made a fixed and universal idea, 
would be omnipotent in the development of life, 
energy, and victory in the Church, and in individual 
Christian life as well. “A great fixed idea,” says 
Taine, “is like the iron rod which sculptors put in 
statues. It impales and sustains.” Strength of soul, 
like strength of body, comes largely of the invigora- 
tion which labor imparts. A working Church can 
hardly fail to be a devoted one in all other respects; 
good works are the best proofs of saving faith. Set 
a Church to hard work if you would save it from 
internal quarrels; make it diligent in labor if you 
would have it sound in doctrine. Since the era of 
missions and of Sunday-school work, there has been 
a constantly growing sentiment of catholicity in the 


64 Christian Work and Consolation. 

Protestant world; a gradual but constant decline 
of sectarian repugnancies and bigotry. Work has a 
mighty logic in it to dispel theoretical fallacies. If 
the Church goes on increasing in practical zeal, it will 
not be wonderful should it at last find itself arrived, 
hardly knowing how, at a common position of com¬ 
plete communion, if not of unification. Inward holi¬ 
ness developing itself in outward labors; self-conse¬ 
cration to God, showing itself in self-sacrifice for 
man; these are the secrets of a prosperous Church 
and of the final victory of Christianity in the world. 

Every man of God should lay out his life for such 
work; should plan for it, and bend all the capa¬ 
bilities of his life toward it. “ The greater part of 
all the mischief of the world,” says Goethe, “ comes 
from the fact that men do not sufficiently under¬ 
stand their own aims.” Perhaps he should have 
said that it comes from the lack of any distinct 
or adequate aims whatever. Except to provide 
the mere means of living — money — most men 
have no aim of life. Hence so many fall into the 
fallacy of entirely exaggerating the means of living, 
and, after obtaining sufficient wealth, still go on 
seeking more and more, as if money were an end, 
not a mere means. A most morbid delusion! Give 
aim to your whole life if you would have a real, a 
productive, a noble life. And remember that no aim 
can be more ennobling, and more felicitous, than 
labor and self-sacrifice for the good of others. If 


A Text from Goethe—Aim in Life. 65 

you have a talent for money-making, thank God for 
it, and apply yourself to use it thoroughly for the 
good of the world. If you do so, the world will soon 
have something of heaven in it for you. A sort of 
joyousness is inherent in benevolence. God has 
wedded the two, that they may bless one another. 

Do not evade this duty, this blessedness, by 
arguing with yourself that you have no talent for 
any important usefulness. The ambition to do 
only signal things may be the veriest pride of the 
depraved heart. If you have only small talents 
—even the one talent of the parable—use it with 
your might; remember it is all your divine Master 
will hold you accountable for; but remember, also, 
that it was the man who, in the parable, neglected 
his one talent, that was lost in the day of reckon¬ 
ing. That one talent of yours, if used aright, may 
place you as high in heaven as any monarch who 
may go thither from an earthly throne. Thought¬ 
ful men are continually inquiring after the secret of 
a happy life. Most writers look upon life as a mys¬ 
tery of evil and sorrow. There is but one secret of 
happiness on earth; to the devout reader of the 
Scriptures it is an “open secretit is, we repeat, 
self-consecration to God and self-sacrifice for man. 

The apostle’s admonition, that he who would 
“ not work, neither should he eat,” had a particular 
application; but it admits of an important general¬ 
ization. It includes a principle of universal appli- 
5 


66 Christian Work and Consolation. 

cation—a principle really grand in itself. Work is 
the law of this part of God’s universe, and we may 
reasonably suppose, of all other parts of it. We 
cannot conceive of an idle archangel; and we know 
that the law of growth and of happiness for intelli¬ 
gent beings in this world is labor every-where and 
evermore. Intellectual and moral life necessarily 
imply activity; the cessation of activity implies 
the cessation of spiritual being. Nature is almost 
infinitely potential, but man alone, under God, is 
potent to develop her potential resources. Her im¬ 
perfection in this respect, therefore, renders man’s 
agency her own necessary complement. And here, 
as we have seen, is her real perfection—her suit¬ 
ableness for God’s design, as the theater of man’s 
activity, and of his consequent development. 

Work, O man, work while the day lasteth! The 
ancient painter said that he painted for eternity. 
The humblest worker in this world is working for 
eternity, whether he thinketh of it or not. There is 
something grand in the heroism of the great worker. 
No mind but that of God can tell the full result of 
his agency in the universe. It may go on, in its un¬ 
foreseen consequences, forever and forever. Good 
men, martyred ages ago for their good works on the 
earth, are still extant, leading on the human race. 
Omnia vincit labor: “Labor conquers all things.” 
St. Paul was never more alive and powerful on the 
earth than he is at this hour. Galileo, Newton, 


A Text from Goethe—Aim in Life. 67 

Bacon, are still living an ever-widening life. Luther, 
Calvin, and Wesley, have only begun their lives. 
Death has not power over them; they still live and 
labor in the spirit among men, are still exerting an 
influence upon the interests of the world. 

But these are great examples; let them not dis¬ 
courage humble workers. Do what thy hand find- 
eth to do, and thou shalt do well; and the divine 
Master will see that thy labor shall not be in vain. 
If you turn one soul to righteousness you shall 
achieve a greater deed than the creation of a 
world, than the creation of a material universe. 
You, the anxious mother, training your little 
household flock, may be preparing a choir for 
heaven. You, the plodding, ill-paid school-teach¬ 
er, may be preparing constellations for the eternal 
skies. You, the village pastor, may be leading up 
a circle to encompass the throne of God. You, 
the sufferer, laid, apparently, aside from all activ¬ 
ity to languish on a sick-bed, even you may be 
ministering, by patient endurance, the highest les¬ 
sons to all around you. And you who know not 
what to do, who sometimes think that God has 
not found you to be worthy or fitted for any good 
activity, even you may bear in mind Milton’s wise 
saying: “ They also serve who only stand and wait.” 

The humblest lot in life may thus be conse¬ 
crated. Every life should have an aim , and it 
should be as high as heaven. 


68 Christian Work and Consolation. 


VIII 


YOUR VOCATION—EXAMPLES. 

HE Roman Church teaches that Christians 



generally have a personal “vocation,” and that 
they should scrupulously seek to ascertain and de¬ 
vote their lives to it. Some are called to the 
“ priesthood,” some to teaching, some to the “ lay 
brotherhoods,” the monasteries and nunneries, but 
most to ordinary life; yet all are “called” to serve 
the Church in whatever sphere. 

Protestantism copies this example of the Latin 
Church in respect to official vocation—the “ call to 
the ministry,” etc.—but is quite vague in respect 
to any “vocation” of its unofficial membership. 
The doctrine of the Latin Church on the subject is 
nevertheless true, though it is wrongly applied. 
By it that Church has gathered around its regular 
or clerical ministry an immense ministry of laymen 
and of women, though it has disastrously erred by 
organizing them into “ religious orders,” and gath¬ 
ering them in monasteries, nunneries, and ecclesi¬ 
astical seminaries. Still we see the power of its 
teaching on the subject—its lay ministry, if we may 
so call it, is vastly larger throughout the world 
than its regular ministry or priesthood, and, per- 


Your Vocation—Examples. 69 

haps, two thirds of its real work is done by the 
former. It finds a place for every kind of talent 
and uses it to the utmost. Protestantism should 
use, but not abuse, the same principle. How 
boundless are our resources of lay talent and zeal! 
And all we need, in order to bring them out for the 
speedy regeneration of the world, is, not the organ¬ 
ic system of Romanism, but the better recognition 
of the principle of lay consecration to Christian 
work—the principle upon which the Latin Church 
has acted, and which is one of the few apostolic 
principles which it has retained amid its many cor¬ 
ruptions of original Christianity. We should Prot¬ 
estantize the principle; were we to do so through¬ 
out Christendom it would not be long before we 
could evangelize the world. 

There is a striking example of Protestant appli¬ 
cation of this principle in the story of the Scotch 
layman, Haldane, who, believing he had a vocation 
to restore orthodoxy in Geneva, where Rationalism 
had superseded the evangelism of the Reformation, 
began humbly there his work by reading and talk¬ 
ing over his Bible in private rooms to such hearers 
as he could induce to visit him of evenings, and 
thus led Malan, Merle d’Aubigne, Frederic Monod, 
Gaussen, Rieu, and many others, back to the primi¬ 
tive faith; produced the “ evangelique" movement 
which has ever since been working in France as 
well as Switzerland—with its theological seminary, 


70 Christian Work and Consolation. 

its numerous schemes of Christian benevolence and 
propagandism, its evangelical literature crowned by 
the works of Gaussen, the Gasparins, and, above all, 
by the “History of the Reformation,” by Merle 
d’Aubign£. 

The case of Haldane is, indeed, an extraordinary 
one; another so fruitful in results might not readily 
be found; but, in principle, it is identical with the 
“ vocation ” of every genuine disciple of Christ. 
Every such one should urgently ask, “ What wilt 
thou have me to do?” and never be content till 
he finds his appropriate work for the Church, how¬ 
ever humble it may be. God can make a grand 
work of it for time and eternity, however hopeless 
it may seem in the outset. None could have been 
more humble, or more apparently hopeless, than 
that which Haldane attempted amid the moral 
death of Geneva; but how imposingly historical 
has it become! 

Much has been said, in these pages, on the gen¬ 
eral subject; but some more practical hints may be 
expedient, for, doubtless, in these days of increased 
lay labor, hundreds of devout souls wait for direc¬ 
tion, wishing to see their way clear for a more ef¬ 
fective life work than they have yet attained ; and 
it is riot unimportant, too, amid the excitements 
of our times, that we guard well against that'tend- 
ency which a generous and heroic enthusiasm al¬ 
ways has to degenerate into fanaticism. 


Your Vocation—Examples. 


7i 

We have two emphatic counsels to give on the 
subject. First, wait not for strong inward sugges¬ 
tions or impulses to determine your “ vocation.” 

The divine Spirit will inspire you, but it is not 
now its ordinary function to make new revelations 
to us, whether about doctrine or duty. It will warm 
your heart and enlighten your eyes to see occa¬ 
sions of duty as they are revealed in the ordering 
of divine Providence, but it will not supersede the 
written word and the human understanding. In 
the “ Life and Times of Rev. Dr. Nathan Bangs ” is 
recorded a striking warning against trusting to im¬ 
pressions, When he traveled in Canada, as one of 
the founders of Methodism there, he was making 
his way with great difficulty through the snow to 
one of his preaching appointments, and saw, some 
distance from the highway, a solitary house almost 
buried in the snow. Sermons were few and far be¬ 
tween, in those days, in that borean country, and 
the itinerant evangelists used to stop at the iso¬ 
lated habitations to pray with and exhort their 
families. Dr. Bangs felt, as he saw this house, that 
he ought not to pass it without delivering his mes¬ 
sage. It was important that he should hasten on 
his course to his appointment; his jaded horse as 
well as himself suffered under the pelting storm; 
the passage from the highway to the house was 
obliterated and would be laborious through the 
drifts; yet he could not get rid of his “ impression.” 


72 Christian Work and Consolation. 

He attempted to reason it down; he passed the 
house, and was resolute to go on, but the impres¬ 
sion deepened momentarily; it seemed an inspira¬ 
tion ; it admonished him that he was evading his 
duty, and that souls in the neglected habitation 
might be lost through his faithlessness. He had 
passed it some distance when he could no longer 
resist the inward impulse; turning his horse back 
he made his way through the almost impassable 
snow toward the building; he shouted to its in¬ 
mates to open, but none appeared; he got nearer, 
and, after straining his lungs in the wintry air to 
call them out, he dismounted, and, opening a win¬ 
dow, saw that it was a deserted house; the only 
hearers for him there were fasting rats. The veter¬ 
an evangelist records that this incident taught him 
a valuable lesson—never to follow inward impulses 
that could not be clearly justified by his common 
sense. Do not, then, wait to be “moved” to any 
given course of usefulness. Distrust every thing 
of the kind, or you may become the victim of self- 
delusion ; and may cut off your own usefulness by 
becoming intolerably obtrusive to those to whom 
you would be useful. 

A second counsel is, that if you would work ef¬ 
fectually for the Church, begin just where you are . 
Seize on the most immediate opportunities; make 
the best of these, and God will lead you on to fur¬ 
ther and higher ones. The best example, perhaps, 


Your Vocation—Examples. 


73 


that you could read for guidance and encouragement 
would be “ A Memoir of William Carvosso,” famous 
as the lay apostle of Cornwall. We refer to him 
because he was one of the humblest lay laborers, and 
yet did great and glorious work. The son of a sailor, 
he was an obscure, illiterate fisherman. He would 
fish by day and hold meetings by night; first in a 
small room in a fisher’s hut, then in a fish-drying 
cellar, then in a large upper room, “ so frail that it 
fell, a heap of ruins, on the assembly.” But his 
converts multiplied, and they built a spacious chapel. 
“ The whole place was transformed.” He removed, 
and began again in his new neighborhood. Soon he 
had three flourishing societies. He now had calls 
in every direction. At Cambuslang, a small town, 
he went praying, singing, and exhorting from house 
to house through the day, and holding meetings at 
night; more than seven hundred souls were convert¬ 
ed. Carvosso became the evangelist of Cornwall. For 
sixty years he kept much of the country astir with 
his simple labors. When sixty-five years old the 
letter “ P,” marking on a record the presence of 
his people at class-meetings, was all he could write. 
He then mastered the art of writing as a means of 
doing further good. “ Comment,” says an Ameri¬ 
can clergyman, writing out these facts, “ is unneces¬ 
sary.” Entirely so; the life and usefulness of this 
faithful man show precisely the lesson you need. 
Begin where you are; do the work at hand; conse- 


74 Christian Work and Consolation. 

crate it with prayer, and follow on in the openings 
of Providence. The one great thing is to begin; 
and this is precisely the way to begin. Begin, and 
God alone can tell where your work will end. It 
may be in the pulpit, or in the mission field at the 
ends of the world, or around your present home; 
but one thing be sure of, it will end at the gate of 
heaven, amid the acclamations of souls saved for¬ 
ever by your help. 


The Little Talents. 


7 5 . 


IX. 

the little talents. 

"W 7* HAT a sizable book could be written on 
* * the importance of little things—the little 
talents, the little opportunities of life. 

The little in life, as in nature, it must be borne 
in mind, is only relatively such. Faraday said that 
there is, potentially, electrical force enough in some 
things, hardly larger than a drop of water, to shat¬ 
ter mountains. Physicists assure us, with mathe¬ 
matical evidence, that the loss of a cubic inch of 
matter would, sooner or later, destroy the equilib¬ 
rium of the solar system, and involve it in ruin. 
Therefore, nature has provided for the conservation 
of every particle, nothing being ever annihilated, 
however often changed in form. In fine, the great 
things in nature are but the aggregation of small 
things, and material science comes, in the last anal¬ 
ysis, to atomic elements as the constituents of all 
things. 

So it is in life. Life is made up mostly of small 
facts: our years of minutes; our physical being 
of pulsations; our mental existence of successive 
thoughts and feelings. Every-day duties make up 
our great moral accountability; fleeting opportuni- 


76 Christian Work and Consolation. 

ties our fate for both worlds; ordinary talents the 
working energies of the race. The great men, so- 
called, (for we are all inestimably great, in a right 
view,) the great talents, are anomalies provided for 
special needs of humanity, but the normal, working, 
steady, and aggregately most effective, resources of 
the world, are its ordinary means, the so-called lit¬ 
tle things. 

What a grand lesson the subject suggests in 
regard to our moral or religious life! Our Lord 
recognized it in the parable of the talents—the com- 
pletest piece of didactic discourse ever given to the 
world. It gives the whole moral theory of life. It 
teaches that every man has some talents, larger or 
smaller. It illustrates the variety of talents. There 
is the man of superiority, who had the five talents; 
the man of mediocrity, who had two; the man of 
inferiority, who had one. But all are held strictly 
amenable; all are to appear before the same tribu¬ 
nal at last, and to be tried by the same ethical 
standard. There is no evasion of that account¬ 
ability, on the ground of our small abilities or 
small opportunities, for the reason that there are 
none that are intrinsically small—being only rela¬ 
tively such. There is no opportunity, no talent, 
however apparently little, that has not been pur¬ 
chased for us by the infinite merit of our Redeemer; 
that may not have eternal consequences; that may 
not, like a single grain of corn, be capable of repro- 


The Little Talents. 


77 

ducing itself in a thousand, in ten thousand, in in¬ 
finitely numerous, results. 

Have we never been struck by the most startling 
phase of that great parable, namely, that it was not 
the superior man, nor the mediocre man, but pre¬ 
cisely the inferior one, who was lost? He is the 
most conspicuous character in the dramatic descrip¬ 
tion, the subject of its tragic denouement . It was 
he who thought his endowments too insignificant 
to be of any use; whose false modesty, or “ volun¬ 
tary humility,” led him to hide it away in a napkin; 
and who supposed he would escape, by his very 
insignificance, the final account , that was held to 
the most rigorous account, and was cast away into 
“ outer darkness.” There is, indeed, a startling sig¬ 
nificance in this feature of the discourse. Pascal 
says, “ Do little things as if they were great, because 
of the majesty of Christ who dwells in thee; and do 
great things as if they*were little and easy, because 
of his omnipotence.” 

Let us beware, then, how we treat the small tal¬ 
ents of the Church. Let no individual Church, 
which may seem to be without resources, without 
talents, “ despise the day of small things.” Let it 
remind itself that every soul belonging to it, how¬ 
ever humble, is an impersonation of some talent, 
some capacity for usefulness in some way or other; 
and that such small talents, consecrated, well-com¬ 
bined, and directed by a faithful pastor, can make 


78 Christian Work and Consolation. 

the poorest Church a fortress of moral power, against 
which “ the gates of hell shall not prevail.” Nay, it 
may itself “ shake the trembling gates of hell.” 

The greatest practical problem of the pastoral 
office, probably, is to know how to get all the small 
talents of a Church into activity. Exceptional or 
superior talent, in individual laymen, is readily 
discernible, and it is expedient always to give it 
recognition in the Church by assigning it appro¬ 
priate labors. It is a precious gift of God ; and 
many a single-talented layman—talented in speech 
or in finance—has borne up a whole Church on his 
shoulders. But there are many struggling societies 
which have no such individual advantage, and yet 
the aggregate of their small talents, if rightly com¬ 
bined and applied, might be immeasurably more 
effective than special talent in one or in a score of 
individuals. Even when a Church may be well 
equipped with talented laymen for its official or 
special work, how incomparably greater would be 
its moral power if all its smaller resources could 
be evoked into action; if all the hidden places of 
its buried single talents could be dug out, the nap¬ 
kins torn off and scattered to the winds, and the 
scores, the hundreds, the thousands, it may be, of 
its resources, disinterred, could be brought around 
its altar for consecration to the common good! 

But while the lesson is important for the Church, 
how much more applicable is it to individual Chris 


The Little Talents. 


7 9 


tians! Man of God, if thou hast but one talent, 
where is it ? Is it hid away in a napkin ? Is it 
buried? Remember that the final judgment will 
ferret it out. Canst thou not speak for thy Master? 
Canst thou not go from house to house, among thy 
neighbors, in his name, teach his little ones in a 
Sunday-school, testify for him in a prayer-meeting, 
give a pittance of thy earnings for him ? Remem¬ 
ber him in the parable that buried his talent, and 
beware of his fate! 

Why “ stand ye all the day idle ? ” Begin some¬ 
thing good, though it be small. The mightiest oak 
in the forest grew from a small acorn. Two grains 
of wheat would suffice, with proper care and labor, 
to cover, in time, all the grain-bearing soil of this 
planet, and, transferred to other orbs, could cover 
in like manner all the worlds of the heavens. Des¬ 
pise not the day of small things. Thou art but a 
small soul if thou doest so. But if thou hast 
hitherto been such, God’s grace can, neverthe¬ 
less, make thee a strong one. Meanwhile remem¬ 
ber that God works by means, and the normal 
means, in this case, is activity. Grace itself is a 
divine force, imparted to the soul, first, for its own 
moral life ; and, secondly, for the expansion and 
invigoration of that life by exercise in good work. 
Strengthen, then, the feeble knees, lift up the flag¬ 
ging arms, sigh no more over the incompetence, the 
meagerness, of thy life. Put away forever the old, 


80 Christian Work and Consolation. 

paltry logic about the problem of life. To a script¬ 
ural Christian life is an intelligible reality, a sub¬ 
lime probation, full of significance, because full 
of beneficent opportunities. Wouldest thou have 
a joyous life? Wouldest thou feel that with thee 
life grows, and becomes more radiant, day by day, 
that ennui and dejection flee, like reptiles, from thy 
presence ? Plunge into useful work; relieve the 
sufferings of others if thou wouldest have thine 
own mitigated. “ Learn to labor , learn to wait" 
says the poet. Yes, wait, but not for the opportu¬ 
nity, only for the reward. The opportunity is now 
ours, and that is all that concerns us. The reward 
—what of that? The greatest of the workers of 
the apostolic age has told us: “ Eye hath not seen, 
nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart 
of man, the things which God hath prepared for 
them that love him.” 


Eleventh Commandment—Manners. 8i 


X. 


THE ELEVENTH COMMANDMENT—MANNERS. 

W ITH most of us manners are a chief ministry 
of life. If love is the very element, the es¬ 
sence of holiness, then holiness should produce 
sweetness of both mind and manners. Amiability 
means, etymologically, loveliness, loveableness. 
But is it not too often the misfortune of piety, 
especially in its more earnest forms, to be accom¬ 
panied by unamiable severity, not to say sour¬ 
ness— by introspective moodiness; unnecessary 
rigor in petty or indifferent things; uncharitable 
crimination of those whose opinions of spiritual 
experience do not conform to our own, habitual 
obtrusion of our own opinions—not only repelling 
individual brethren, but sometimes annoying and 
agitating whole Churches ? 

“ Be courteous: ” The sentence, though brief, is 
full of significance, and is divinely authoritative. 
It is a commandment. 

Stanley, in his “ Lectures on the Scotch Church,” 
tells a fine story about Archbishop Usher, the chron- 
ologist of sacred history. Hearing of the great 

genius and saintliness of Rutherford, the celebrated 
6 


82 Christian Work and Consolation. 


Scotch divine, he went incognito to the rural parson¬ 
age of the good pastor, and was received to its hos¬ 
pitality as a belated traveler. The household was 
“ catechised ” that evening, and the stranger took 
his seat among them to share the exercise. “ How 
many commandments are there?” asked Rutherford. 
“ Eleven,” replied Usher. Rutherford rebuked him 
severely for his ignorance. What had been his ed¬ 
ucation, that he could make such a blunder? The 
next morning was Sunday, and, as the pastor went 
on his way through the woods, toward his church, 
he heard fervent prayer in a thicket, and was deeply 
affected. Usher soon appeared coming out of it, 
and Rutherford had an explanation. His heart 
was still more deeply touched, and the Archbishop 
was constrained to preach for him that morning. 
He did so on the text, “A new commandment,” 
etc. Rutherford was now still more deeply affect¬ 
ed ; there was, indeed, an eleventh commandment 
—“that ye love one another”—and he had unin¬ 
tentionally broken it, for he had not been courte¬ 
ous to his eminent visitor in his Saturday evening 
catechetical rebuke, and the command to be cour¬ 
teous was certainly implied in the new command¬ 
ment—if not, it must be a twelfth one. 

It is, indeed, a “commandment,” whether the 
eleventh modified, or a twelfth. Hannah More, in 
her Essay on St. Paul, delineates him as a veritable 
gentleman. He knew how to rebuke audacious 


Eleventh Commandment—Manners. 83 

sin; but his writings teem with maxims inculcating 
gentle behavior. There was a fine touch of cour¬ 
tesy in his retraction of that sudden rebuke to the 
Jewish priest—of courteous respect for the office, 
if not the officer. 

Manners are admitted to be, at least, “ minor 
morals.” Mi?ior morals ! How often are they in¬ 
deed major morals ! As making up a great propor¬ 
tion of the habitual conduct of life, their influence 
on ourselves, as well as on others, is habitual, and, 
therefore, must be proportionately strong and im¬ 
portant. Shall we, then, deem them mere minor 
morals ? Do they not fashion us, to a great extent, 
for both worlds ? “As a man thinketh, so is he,” 
is an old proverb; as a man acteth, so is he, may 
be more surely affirmed, especially as he acteth hab¬ 
itually, in the common intercourse of life, so thor¬ 
oughly modified by our demeanor. 

You “ know a man by the company he keeps,” 
says another maxim ; you know him still more by 
the habitudes which accompany him. 

You know him by his manners, not merely be¬ 
cause manners are the most habitual effect, or ex¬ 
pression, of his character, but because they have 
really, to a great extent, formed his character. 
They are cause as well as effect. 

There is, then, a profound ethical importance in 
manners, for their educational, their moral, effect on 
the man himself. A truly courteous man, a true 


84 Christian Work and Consolation. 

gentleman, and especially a Christian gentleman, is 
the better for every act of good manners in his 
daily life. There is sentiment, and, in a sense, 
moral sentiment, at the bottom of all manners. 
Respect for others has some very subtle and vital 
affinity with self-respect; and self-respect is not 
self-conceit, it is respect for the moral claims of our 
own nature on our own conduct. 

Courtesy is, then, we repeat, ethical—and much 
more deeply and broadly so than is usually sup¬ 
posed. We cannot habitually violate its requisi¬ 
tions without injuring ourselves, as well as others. 
Discourtesy reacts and degenerates. 

But manners are not only important as self-edu¬ 
cational ; they are powerful in their influence on 
others, and have, in this respect, an ethical impor¬ 
tance : to them attaches an unavoidable responsi¬ 
bility. 

Our children are more effectively educated at 
home than in the school or in the world. The daily, 
insinuating influence of a mothers voice, or glance, 
on the morale of her child, is like the gentle air and 
sunlight to young plants. The roughness or gentle¬ 
ness of a father’s demeanor in the household may 
make “ roughs ” or gentlemen of his boys. Mutual 
petulance or affectionateness between the children 
of a family may depend almost entirely on the 
same qualities in the father and mother. There is 
scarcely any thing, however apparently trivial, in 


Eleventh Commandment—Manners. 85 

the manners of the home that is not irresistibly 
educational. The ladder heavenward, visioned in 
the mind of the patriarch, is planted at the domes¬ 
tic hearth, and inclines over the very cradle. Are 
manners minor morals, then ? Nay, they are the 
most effective education, they form one of the most 
potent influences of the common, human life. There 
are cases in which defective manners inflict an evil 
equivalent to certain more apparent violations of 
morality. 

Manners are the physiognomy of the soul. Rude¬ 
ness, and especially ill-tempered severity, show an 
inferior morale. The personal revelation of char¬ 
acter, particularly in familiar life, is one of the most 
influential forces for good or ill that acts upon men. 
It is in life what it is in literature, only incompa¬ 
rably more influential, as it is more habitual and af¬ 
fects our more direct and more sacred relatipns and 
intercourse. We know that in literature it is the 
great, the distinctive, power of an author. It is the 
individuality, the intellectual and moral personality 
of a writer, that mostly makes his productions class¬ 
ical or otherwise. Milton, Shakespeare, Goethe, 
Schiller, Byron, we read themselves in their style 
of both language and thought; and they thus mold 
the souls of their readers after their own image. 
Pascal says, that “ When we see a natural style we 
are surprised and delighted, for, in expecting to see 
an author, we find a man; while those who have 


86 Christian Work and Consolation 

good taste, often, in opening a book, expecting to 
see a man, find only an author.” “ Style is the 
man,” says another great French writer. And so 
manners are the man—the style of the man’s con¬ 
duct, and immeasurable in their silent, unconscious 
influence on all around us. Not only do parents 
thus mold the hearts and lives of their children, 
children the hearts and lives of one another, but 
pastors thus act on their Churches, neighbors on 
neighbors, and even nations on nations. “Be court¬ 
eous,” is, then, we may repeat, an important moral 
law—a divine commandment. 

It is a fallacy to suppose that manners are mat¬ 
ters merely of social life; they belong to a man’s 
whole life—his public as well as his private life. 
They have infinitely more to do with the suc¬ 
cess of public men than is usually supposed. 
They affect especially and profoundly the pastoral 
character and success. It is a great thing to be a 
true evangelist; but can you be completely so with¬ 
out obedience to the injunction of one who was 
more than an evangelist, who was an apostle—“ Be 
courteous?” A public man who outrages good 
manners may not be altogether a moral nuisance, 
but he cannot well be a salutary moral power 
in the community. His best theoretical instruc¬ 
tion, if he be a public teacher, may not com¬ 
pensate for the continuous, insidious, demoralizing 
influence of his manners on his habitual hearers, 


Eleventh Commandment—Manners. 87 

especially on the incipient character of children and 
youth. The public teacher should, above all things, 
be, as Cicero insisted in regard to the orator, a good 
man; but, next to this, he should be a genuine 
gentleman. This phrase ordinarily has a somewhat 
ambiguous application : we need not say that we 
are not using it in its equivocal, conventional sense. 
We use it in the sense of the apostle’s command— 
“ Be courteous,”—maintain your manners, he would 
say. Gentleness, so incessantly enjoined in holy 
Scripture, is an equivalent phrase—because genuine 
politeness itself always includes, as its central ele¬ 
ment, gentleness, (gentility,) kindliness; that is to 
say, a certain moral sentiment of tenderness and 
good-will toward all men. It is a fact, worthy of 
the attention of the ethical philosopher, that true 
manners, genuine politeness, in not only polished 
life, but even in the chivalry of the age of knight¬ 
hood, has thus been identified with a certain moral 
sentiment; that “gentility” essentially means gen¬ 
tleness ; that even the chivalry, the bravery, of the 
hero, has proverbially been associated with gener¬ 
osity. How can a public man, then, dispense with 
these qualities? There is not merely a conciliatory 
influence in good manners on the part of the public 
man—an influence to win a candid hearing—but 
there is a positive moral power in them, a power 
which enhances all other power. Who has not ob¬ 
served how differently is received and felt the utter- 


88 Christian Work and Consolation. 

ance of the same truth by a man of genuine court¬ 
esy on the one hand, and a man of reckless man¬ 
ners on the other? How often have we seen the 
storm, raised by a violent or insolent disputant, al¬ 
layed and turned into a favoring gale for a good 
cause, by a man of courteous speech, a man whose 
self-respect has made him respectful to his antag- 
onists, and whose “ soft answer turneth away wrath.” 
“ Be courteous,” then, if you would be effective; be 
always and every-where the true Christian gentle¬ 
man, and men will not fail to recognize in your 
manners an authority for your opinions. Your 
people will feel it; your children, your neighbors, 
will feel it; where your words might be powerless 
your manners may be omnipotent. 

Let us not misunderstand the word. It is 
courtesy, not merely the manner or appearance 
of courtesy, that is enjoined. What may be man¬ 
ners in one country or age may not be such in 
another. Courtesy is the same every-where and al¬ 
ways. Courtesy, as meant by the apostle, and in¬ 
stinctively recognized by refined minds, is not so 
much manners, as it is the underlying sentiment of 
manners. And manners themselves should be dis¬ 
tinguished from mannerisms. Mannerism is some¬ 
times a mere perversion, a caricature of manners. 
The highest courtesy is often seen in the avoidance 
of manners—in the intercourse of true gentlemen, 
who have so much hearty regard for one another, so 


Eleventh Commandment—Manners. 89 

much confidence in their mutual good understand¬ 
ing, that they spontaneously dispense with all mere 
forms of courtesy. Courtesy is thus supreme in its 
spirit, while unconcerned about its expression. It 
is a sort of compliment to an intimate friend for you 
to show that you so far confide in his courtesy as 
to believe that he expects not the forms of courtesy 
from you. Lovers are never fastidious about the 
etiquette of manners. The etiquette of manners 
seldom enters into the most holy sanctuaries or in¬ 
timacies of life. It is left outside, as in the East 
the sandals are left at the door; but courtesy al¬ 
ways enters, and is most at home in the homes of 
the heart. 

Great was Paul as a theologian, all the world ac¬ 
knowledges ; but he was equally great as an ethical 
philosopher. What a fine discernment of moral dis¬ 
tinctions he had ! Love was with him the “ fulfilling 
of the law,’' and love is, in his writings, the essential 
principle of courtesy—gentleness, kindness, sweet¬ 
ness of soul. When were ever better ethics given to 
the world than in his discourse to the Corinthians 
on charity ? That discourse should certainly rank 
next to his divine Master’s Sermon on the Mount, 
the second great religious document in the posses¬ 
sion of the world. Any candid skeptic must acknowl¬ 
edge that, would all the world conform to it, the hu¬ 
man race would be as perfect in morals and manners 
as it could be. And what is this but acknowledging 


go Christian Work and Consolation. 

the divine fitness, and, therefore, truthfulness, of the 
document, and, indeed, of the religion which gave 
it birth ? What courtesy could transcend that 
which “ thinketh no evil,” which “ envieth not,’' 
which “ seeketh not its own,” which “ is not puffed 
up,” which “ believeth all things, hopeth all things, 
endureth all things ! ” 

“ A holy life is made up,” says Bonar, “ of a 
number of small things. Little words, not elo¬ 
quent speeches or sermons ; little deeds, not mira¬ 
cles nor battles, nor one great heroic act, or mighty 
martyrdom, make up the true Christian life. The 
little, constant sunbeam, not the lightning; the 
waters of Shiloah, ‘ that go softly ’ in their meek 
mission of refreshment, not the waters of the ‘ river, 
strong and many,’ rushing down in torrents, noise, 
and force, are the true symbols of a holy life. The 
avoidance of little evils, little sins, little inconsist¬ 
encies, little weaknesses, little follies, little indis¬ 
cretions and imprudencies, little foibles, little in¬ 
dulgences of self and the flesh—the avoidance of 
such little things as these goes far to make up, at 
least, the negative beauty of a holy life.” 

The aim of Christianity is to produce a sanctified 
and noble manhood in this world, preparatory for 
angelhood in a higher world. He that works well 
for his religion honors it, but he that lives it well 
honors it more, for such a life is itself the best work, 
and empowers all other work. 


The Greatest Power—Character. 91 


XI. 


THE GREATEST POWER—CHARACTER. 
HARACTER, after all, is the greatest of tal- 



ents; for it is the greatest moral power in our 
world; and some character we can all have. 

Ambition—the love of power—has been called 
“ the infirmity of great minds.” But let us not 
judge it too severely. It may be something much 
better. Great capabilities are usually accompanied 
by correspondent instincts, and love of power may 
be, in a superior mind, but the instinctive love of 
activity, of achievement, which belongs to great 
faculties. Rightly directed, and especially if it is 
consecrated, it may be a blessing to all whom it 
reaches. A superior mind can never be content 
without activity, that is to say, the exercise of 
power. This is at once an inherent law of the 
mind, and an essential condition of happiness. 
The restlessness of many men comes of inadequate 
employment of their faculties. Men, discontented, 
and yet fully occupied, are very rare ; and when 
such cases are found, it is usually the fact that the 
failure of the law is only apparent, not real; it 
arises from their activity being misplaced ; they 
may have been consigned by their parents and 


92 Christian Work and Consolation. 

teachers to a sphere of activity which is incompati¬ 
ble with their natural tastes, and life with them, 
though full of energy, may be a perpetual self¬ 
conflict. 

The love of power, then, usually, though not 
always, means the instinctive love of activity, 
which accompanies the possession of inherent force 
—of real talent or capability of power. The excep¬ 
tion is the case in which vanity or self-conceit may 
imagine that it possesses the inherent power, and 
demand, as its right, the exterior sphere for its ex¬ 
ercise. Nature always avenges herself in such in¬ 
stances ; the claimant’s supposed power is sooner 
or later found to be feebleness, and he is doomed 
to the worst of all defeats—to self-defeat. 

A noble thing is power, then—energy to act, to 
achieve, and an appropriate sphere for that energy. 
Blessed is the man who, with a pure conscience, 
can direct public opinion, can lead to victory an 
army for the right, can legislate for an empire, sway 
his fellow-men by eloquence, write a great book, in¬ 
vent a useful machine—who can, in other words, ac¬ 
quire and demonstrate great power in the world. 

What is called genius is J:he best recognized 
power. Genius, however, is an ambiguous word, 
and any great intellectual endowment is usually 
considered to be genius. There is, nevertheless, a 
kind of power which is really superior to any mere 
mental endowment, any form of genius. It is 


The Greatest Power—Character. 93 

moral pozver . There may perhaps be some things 
in the writings of St. John which may be called 
traits of genius, but the Christian world has never 
paused to pronounce them such. It has gone on, 
from century to century, reading, praying, weep¬ 
ing, rejoicing over the glorious fourth gospel—• 
more, probably, than over any other portion of the 
Bible. Why ? It is not more a divine revelation 
than the other sacred books; but the personality of 
the writer, as in all the other sacred books, is re¬ 
vealed in its style, both of language and of thought, 
and that personality is so morally high—so pure, 
so loving, so pathetic, so divine, and touching to all 
our own best sensibilities—that we quite under¬ 
stand why we read why he is called “ the beloved 
disciple while he reclined, on the trichininm, in 
Jesus’ bosom. There is a power in this writer that 
is above all mere intellectual force ; the truths he 
utters are pervaded by a moral force, emanating 
from his sanctified personality. He is not only the 
beloved, but the loving disciple, and love intones 
his style, and subdues our souls to his tranquil but 
irresistible sway. Say not that we are imputing 
the power of the divine, inspiring Spirit to the hu¬ 
man writer. What we say is, that his personality, 
as well as his teachings, reveals that divine inspira¬ 
tion, and does so in a most remarkable manner. 
In other words, the greatest power of St. John 
(the most powerful in the hearts of men, of all 


94 Christian Work and Consolation. 

writers, probably) is moral power, the power of 
character. 

Luther had very vigorous mental powers, but it 
was the moral power of the man that re-enforced 
them all. The power of his character still keeps 
up his chief effectiveness in the world. Suppose 
documents were just now discovered which should 
incontestably prove his character to have been 
false—that as a reformer he was simply an impos¬ 
tor—what an annihilation of the man and his influ¬ 
ence would follow! And why? Because character 
is moral power, and moral power is the chief power. 

Wesley had great legislative and acute logical 
powers; but his moral power was the chief force in 
his almost unparalleled usefulness—the force with¬ 
out which all his other powers would have been 
comparatively ineffective. Suppose indisputable 
proofs were discovered to-morrow that Wesley was 
a self-seeking hypocrite—all his scheme of Meth¬ 
odism a contrivance for base, personal ends—what 
would be the effect of such a discovery on the whole 
religious world ? How would Methodism, with all 
its real inherent truth, reel under that discovery— 
perhaps sink down and give place to some other 
embodiment of its truth. Why ? Because, again, 
character is moral power, and moral power is the 
supreme power in our world. For, in its highest, 
its Christian form, it is “the power of the Highest,” 
the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, sanctifying the 


The Greatest Power—Character. 95 

human personality. “Ye shall receive power , after 
that the Holy Ghost is come upon you : and ye 
shall be witnesses unto me.” Stephen is character¬ 
ized as “ a man full of faith and of the Holy Ghost,” 
and immediately the context repeats, as synony¬ 
mous, the declaration that he was “full of faith and 
power" Paul affirms, in remarkable words, that 
God “ hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of 
power , and of love, and of a sound mind.” He 
speaks of the divine “ power that worketh in us,” 
of the “work of faith with power,” of being “ strong 
in the Lord, and in the power of his might.” The 
power of a good man’s life is the power of God 
within him. 

All manifestations of force are striking—of phys¬ 
ical force most immediately; of intellectual force, 
less directly, but more profoundly; of moral power, 
most effectually to reflective observers at least. In 
even great material scenes, their tacit suggestion of 
power is the chief element of sublimity. It is not 
the mere physical mass, or contour, of the mount¬ 
ain range that makes it impressive; but the idea, 
however vaguely associated with it, of the force 
that lifted it aloft, stretching its foundations along 
the earth, and its summits along the sky. Niagara 
is picturesque in outline and coloring, but the 
thought of the force which precipitates its mighty 
waters, shaking all the adjacent lands, and thun¬ 
dering to the heavens, is the highest source of its 


96 Christian Work and Consolation. 

poetic effect. The planets themselves would lose 
more than half their sublimity were it not for the 
idea of their motions, the effect of force—those 
motions from which the archangels, in Goethes 
“ Chorus in Heaven,” imbibe strength as they gaze 
upon the spectacle. Still more impressive are ex¬ 
amples of intellectual power. The “ Principia ” 
of Newton is sublimer than any planet. The 
planets were but stepping-stones, by which his 
great intellect ascended for the survey and men¬ 
suration of the universe. Airy’s and Leverrier’s 
discovery of the existence, and even the place, of a 
planet, (which had never been seen,) by mere math¬ 
ematical calculations, was a more impressive fact 
than the later telescopic sight there of our most 
magnificent world. 

But moral power, the power of virtue, of char¬ 
acter, transcends any such examples. Plato said 
that the sublimest spectacle in the universe is that 
of a virtuous man invincibly struggling against 
overwhelming evils. If so to the contemplation of 
a heathen, how much more to us who believe that 
the mountains are to melt, and the heavens pass 
away into nothingness, but that the soul of man is 
to survive forever? What is there to-day, in the 
whole history of Christ himself, more powerful than 
the simple, moral beauty of his character? His 
miracles are denied, his doctrines disputed, but his 
hardiest critics bow down in unquestioning recog- 


The Greatest Power—Character. 97 

nition of his character. His enemies are com¬ 
pelled to praise him in the gates. His character is 
his greatest, his ever-abiding miracle, and to-day 
holds together his Church more powerfully than 
any thing he ever did or taught. Were it not for 
that, his enemies might well hope to triumph in 
these skeptical times. His character is the demon¬ 
stration of his truth. 

And who, next to Christ, in the whole apostolic 
circle do we most admire and love ? Whose words 
touch us with most sanctifying and most consoling 
power ? Who, of all human beings, presents us 
with the best realized ideal of Christianity—who, 
but St. John, the nearest approximation to Christ 
himself, the “ beloved,” because the loving “ dis¬ 
ciple ? ” It is also a fact, well worthy of remark, 
that the lowliest of the virtues of Christianity, those 
least prized by the conventional judgment of the 
world, or by even the Church in its worldliness, are 
the most powerful. Its meekness, its humility, its 
tender charity, its long-suffering, its self-sacrifice— 
these, when embodied in living character, are the 
true attributes of saintship and of saintly power. 
The world is compelled to admire them while it 
refuses to imitate them. They often vindicate re¬ 
ligion even when it is associated with repulsive 
errors. What more gratefully redeems to us Ro¬ 
manism itself than the character of St. Vincent de 
Paul, St. Francis de Sales, Fdnelon, or the saintly 
7 


98 Christian Work and Consolation. 

women among the Catholic Mystics — Catherine 
Adorna, St. Theresa, Madame Guyon—notwith¬ 
standing their dreamy delusions? Whatever their 
errors of thought, they realized essential Christian¬ 
ity in their hearts, and their sweet, pure, benevo¬ 
lent, suffering lives are to-day the greatest moral 
power of their Church in the world. Fenelon erred 
when, reading in his pulpit the interdict of the 
Pope against himself, he closed his mouth forever 
on the subjects of controversy between him and 
Bossuet; but we know he erred sincerely, meekly, 
self-sacrificingly, and in accordance with all his 
religious education. While we forgive the error, 
we love the more the character of the man. Not 
in “ Telemachus,” the “Dialogues of the Dead," 
and the “ Lives of the Philosophers,” does F&nelon 
live to-day, but in his transcendent Christian char¬ 
acter. How he towers above the Pope who con¬ 
demned him! How few of us can, at this moment, 
recall the name of that Pope! but to whom of us all 
is not the name of the meek and saintly Arch¬ 
bishop like ointment poured forth? Who doubts 
that he is higher than any Pope in heaven, or that 
his influence is more salutary on earth than that 
of any man who has worn the triple crown of the 
Vatican? And why? It is because there is some¬ 
what of omnipotence in moral power—in character. 

One of the most noteworthy examples of this 
power was St. Philip, the supreme saint of the 


The Greatest Power—Character. 99 

Russian Church. Early in the sixteenth century 
he appeared as a poor and weary pilgrim at the 
Convent of Solovetsk, far up in the frozen North. 
He seemed to have come only to pray and repose, 
but soon took the vows, and abode there in quiet, 
humble devotion. He was a man of personal beau¬ 
ty, intelligence, and taste. For nine or ten years 
he was a mystery to the monks; for he aspired to 
no distinction among them, but held his peace, and 
consecrated himself wholly to God, as best he could 
with the feeble lights of that barbarous age and 
land. When the prior of the convent died, nearly 
ten years after Philip’s arrival, the monks gladly 
appointed him to the vacant place. He reformed 
the whole establishment, introducing into it and 
its vicinity all sorts of improvements — religious, 
artistic, agricultural, and mechanical. He showed 
himself a man of talent, but a saint in the purity 
and humility of his life. His quiet moral power 
enabled him to carry every thing before him, not¬ 
withstanding the fanatical, the almost savage char¬ 
acter of his companions. 

The mystery of his history remained until he 
was called by the Emperor, Ivan IV., to Moscow, to 
assist in the counsels of the Government, and at 
last to be the Metropolitan of the Church in the 
capital. It then became known that he was born 
a noble of the house of Kolicheff, Moscow, that his 
mother had early trained him to religion, but as a 


ioo Christian Work and Consolation. 

noble he was bound to serve the Czar, and his edu¬ 
cation was partially conformed to that necessity. 
He became accomplished as a rider, hunter, fencer, 
as a scholar, and a courtier, and in early manhood 
was presented to Ivan, then a child, who became 
warmly attached to him. He was the favorite of 
both men and women in the court, and his pros¬ 
pects of promotion were the fairest; but the pious 
training of his childhood never failed. He longed 
for a retired, religious life. He found the Kremlin 
and its surroundings full of corruption and crime. 
Assuming the guise of a pilgrim, he wended his 
way on foot northward through “ pathless forests,” 
fording rivers, sleeping in the cabins of peasants, 
and often working for his bread, till he arrived at 
the convent of Solovetsk, in the Frozen Sea. 

, When recalled to Moscow he discovered that 
Ivan had degenerated almost to heathenism. He 
had assumed the Tartar costume, and “ adopted 
Asiatic ways,” that is to say, Asiatic vices. “ He 
went about the city,” says an historian, “ ordering 
this man to be beaten, that man to be killed. The 
square in front of the Holy Gate was red with 
blood, and every house in the city was filled with 
sighs and groans.” Ivan’s ecclesiastical counsel¬ 
ors had opposed his atrocities, He remembered 
Philip as the amiable companion of his childhood, 
and supposed he should find him a more compla¬ 
cent adviser. Philip struggled against the royal 


IOI 


The Greatest Power—Character. 

summons, but at last he had to obey, and left his 
convent, expecting martyrdom. Two venerable 
prelates who had rebuked the monarch’s vices were 
driven away, and Philip was installed chief prelate. 
But he never wavered in his integrity; he refused 
to bless the Czar on public occasions when it would 
have been a sanction to his iniquities ; he entreated 
him in the palace, he admonished him in the 
church, he meekly bore intolerable insults from 
him. Ivan threatened him with death, but he re¬ 
plied, “ I am a pilgrim and a stranger on earth; I 
am ready to suffer for the truth.” He was dragged 
from his church, disrobed of his pontifical apparel, 
arrayed in rags, and drawn through the streets on 
a sledge, amid the hootings of courtiers and sol¬ 
diers, but also the sobs and prayers of the op¬ 
pressed people. “ Do not grieve,” he cried to the 
latter, “ do not grieve, it is the will of God. Pray, 
pray!” He was cast into a dungeon, chained by 
the hands, feet, neck, and left a whole week with¬ 
out food or drink ; his family and friends were put 
to cruel deaths ; but he was meekly resolute against 
any compromise of his duty. At last the execu¬ 
tioner was sent to him also. “ Give me thy bless¬ 
ing,” said the assassin, as he entered his cell. “ Do 
thy master’s work,” was the reply of the heroic saint, 
and he fell beneath the sword. His body was not 
decomposed, but petrified, runs the record—probably 
by the effect of the soil—and was disinterred and pri- 


102 Christian Work and Consolation. 

vately borne to his northern convent. In the reign 
of the father of Peter the Great it was brought back 
to Moscow, attended by an immense convoy of ec¬ 
clesiastics and pilgrims, for the virtues of the holy 
man had triumphed. All Russia had been struck 
by the lesson of his devout and long-suffering life; 
he had become the head saint of her calendar. 
The whole nation went into penitential mourning 
on account of his murder; his picture is in every 
house, his memory in every heart; and, though 
the superstitions of the country are mixed with the 
popular regard for him, yet is his holy life the most 
salutary example, probably, that the religion of this 
semi-barbarous but rapidly advancing nation knows. 
He lies in a shrine of silver in the great cathedral 
of Moscow; and, says the historian, “ On the day 
of his coronation every emperor of Russia has to 
kneel before his shrine and kiss his feet.” That is 
a scene for the pen of the poet and the pencil of 
the artist. 

Such is moral power—the power of character. 
Character, we have said, is the greatest of talents, 
and also the most attainable, for all can acquire it. 
In the distribution of wealth, power, or genius God 
sees it wise to discriminate, for what may be useful 
with one man may be disastrous with another. 
But not so in the gifts of his grace; in the virtues 
which make character, and invest it with unequaled 
power. The lowliest soul may attain to the meek- 


The Greatest Power—Character. 103 

ness of Moses, the patience of Job, the charity of 
St. John, the self-sacrificing heroism of St. Paul, to 
the very “mind that was in Christ ” himself. And 
this is the highest source of the highest power on 
earth. No man can have it without being a living 
power in the world. Saintliness is a sort of moral 
omnipotence. In the pulpit, in the pew, in the 
workshop, in the school, in the dungeon, or at the 
consuming stake, it is a power that men most feel, 
whether they acknowledge it or not—a power that 
shakes the gates of hell, and before which open the 
gates of heaven. It may be yours, O feeblest child 
of God! and its usefulness, in saving your child, or 
the humblest servant of your household, may set 
all heaven ringing with those acclamations of “joy 
among the angels of God ” which they utter over 
“ one sinner that repenteth.” The world may know 
little or nothing of your good deed, but its record 
will be on high forever. 


io4 Christian Work and Consolation. 


XII. 


LOVE IN CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
ONSECRATION and faith are the conditions 



of the “ perfect love which casteth out fear.” 

“ God weigheth,” says a Kempis, “ more with 
how much love a man worketh, than how much he 
doeth. He doeth much that loveth much.” 

There is a volume of meaning in this brief pas¬ 
sage. An able American thinker has published a 
system of Moral Philosophy, in which he attempts 
to base all Christian ethics on the scriptural doc¬ 
trine of “ charity,” or love. This is one of the 
“ deep things of God ;” and the more valid for 
being deep, for being specially Christian. In those 
better times coming, when purely Christian ideas 
shall predominate in the speculations of philoso¬ 
phers, after the confessed failure of all other ideas, 
the doctrine of Christian love will come to be 
acknowledged as the primary and potential truth 
of all ethics, as it is now acknowledged to be of all 
divine or spiritual life in man. 

“ Love is the fulfilling of the law;” the phrase 
is not merely rhetorical, it is the literal affirmation 
of a great truth—fundamental in the Christian sys¬ 
tem. Mere “ legalism ” is moral servility, or, at 


Love in Christian Ethics. 105 

best, mechanical morality, its mere carcass; love is 
its genuine animus, without which it may be per¬ 
fect in form, in anatomical outline, but dead. The 
expression, the color, the warmth, the power of 
morality depend upon its vitality; and its vitality 
is love. 

He that does all things from love may err at 
times, but his very errors derive purity from his 
animus —from his loving motive; he fulfills the law 
even in his error—the law in its spirit, though not 
in its letter. The remark needs to be cautiously 
made; for hardly any error is more fatal to real re¬ 
ligion than Antinomianism. But who was less an 
Antinomian than St. Paul ? And yet who has more 
positively asserted the contrast between the right¬ 
eousness which is by the law and the righteousness 
which is by faith, affirming, meanwhile, that he did 
not hereby make void, but on the contrary estab¬ 
lished, the law? 

Now the righteousness of faith is not a right¬ 
eousness exempt from the'claims of morality; it is 
not believing, trusting, without working. Though 
it is moral life , rather than legal works, yet, like 
all life, it acts, it works, and must do so in order 
to be life; but it works by love. Love becomes 
its motive force and its law’, and it thus fulfills 
the law—all law, without servile subjection to 
any. This is Paul’s great theme. This is, indeed, 
a supreme distinction of Christianity as we have 


io6 Christian Work and Consolation. 

affirmed. This is the very basis of its ethical sys¬ 
tem. You look in vain for any thing analogous to 
it in any of the classical or oriental ethical the¬ 
ories ; nor will you discover it in any of the modern 
extra-Christian theories. 

Paul magnifies the law by this evangelical theory; 
for he makes out that doing what is really right in 
itself, may be doing wrong in special cases; cases 
where love is practically ignored. While arguing, 
in his First Epistle to the Corinthians, against the 
importance of ceremonies, especially against the 
importance of “ meats and drinks,” under the new 
dispensation, and showing that a Christian man may 
eat or not eat certain things as he pleases, he, never¬ 
theless, concludes the argument by affirming that 
to eat what, in itself, is innocent, would be sinful, if 
it injure a weak brother; and he touches the height 
of loving morality in his final exclamation that 
“if meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no 
flesh while the world standeth.” There is moral¬ 
ity! But what morality? The ethics of “love”— 
the love that fulfills the spirit as well as the letter 
of the law. 

Hence Christianity has justly defined the highest 
ideal of spiritual life to be perfect love. This is 
the Bible perfection—Christian perfection. The 
Oberlin theologians teach a sort of legal perfection; 
some of our later “perfectionists” teach, it is to 
be feared, a species of Antinomian perfection. The 


Love in Christian Ethics. 


107 

Bible teaches Christian perfection—not absolute, 
nor angelic, nor Adamic, but Christian perfection ; 
that is to say, the maximum of practicable Chris¬ 
tian life, according to the holy Scriptures, whatever 
that may be. That maximum we find in the script¬ 
ural doctrine that “ perfect love casteth out fear.” 
This doctrine is but the grand scriptural postulate 
that “ love is the fulfilling of the law.” 

This great truth is the very key to the Pauline 
writings, and, indeed, to the whole New Testament 
canon. They teach substantially, first, that the 
moral law is, per se, universal, immutable, and ever¬ 
lasting; secondly, that, to sinful man, it is absolute¬ 
ly impracticable, and that, if he is to be saved only 
by “the righteousness which is by the law,” his 
best estate is one of utter hopelessness; thirdly, 
that under the Christian economy not the law, but 
man’s relation to it, is modified by the mediatorial 
intervention of Christ; that he has “ fulfilled all 
righteousness” in our behalf; that for this purpose 
“ God hath set [him] forth to be a propitiation 
through faith in his blood . . . that he might be 
just , and the justifier of him which believeth ”—in 
other words, that faith in this mediatorial provision 
justifies the penitent sinner before the law; but, 
lastly, that this faith is not a mere sentiment, it is 
an active, productive principle; it is attended by 
“ the righteousness which is by faith ; ” it works, and 
works by the mightiest force of the moral world, by 


108 Christian Work and Consolation. 

love . Love is thus, in connection with the media¬ 
tion of Christ, the fulfilling of the law. And per¬ 
fect love is Christian perfection. Christ summed 
up the whole moral law as love to God—“with 
all thy heart, . . . soul, and . . . mind —and” to 
“thy neighbor as thyself; and, in the Sermon on 
the Mount, he concludes his exhortation, to love 
our enemies, with the emphatic phrase, “ Be ye 
therefore perfect , even as your Father which is in 
heaven is perfect.” 

“ It is heaven upon earth,” says Bacon, “ to have 
a man’s mind move in charity, rest in Providence, 
and turn upon the poles of truth.” “ He doeth 
much,” as good a Kempis says, “that loveth much.” 
The highest acts of legal right may be done with 
a severity of mere justice, which, though venerable, 
may yet be almost terrible to us. The smallest 
acts of goodness become great, sometimes over¬ 
whelmingly powerful, by the single quality of love. 

Our Lord commemorates the poor widow’s mite, 
and has made it notable and powerful through all 
the range and all the ages of his Church. It has 
done more for the charities of the Church and its 
genuine prosperity than the conversion and gifts 
of Constantine, the first Christian emperor. What 
a lesson was that which He taught respecting the 
cup of water, given in the name of a disciple— 
given in love! “ Love,” says a Kempis, “ impels 

a man to do great things, and stirs him up to be 


Love in Christian Ethics. 


109 

always longing for what is more perfect. Love de¬ 
sires to be aloft, and will not be kept back by any 
thing low or mean. Nothing is sweeter than love, 
nothing more courageous, nothing higher, nothing 
wider, nothing more pleasant; nothing fuller, nor 
better, in heaven and earth, because love is born of 
God, and cannot rest but in God above all created 
things. He that loveth flieth, runneth, and rejoic- 
eth; he is free, and cannot be held in. He giveth 
all for all, and hath all in all. Love all for Jesus’ 
sake, but Jesus for himself.” 

There can be no self-exaltation, no spiritual van¬ 
ity, in the sanctification which thus consists of 
absolute love. Love is inherently incompatible 
with any such perversion. Humility is the finest 
grace of charity. Jonathan Edwards says, of such 
a Christian, that “ he is like a little flower that we 
see in the spring of the year, low and humble on 
the ground ; opening its bosom to receive the pleas¬ 
ant beams of the sun’s glory; rejoicing, as it were, 
in a calm rapture, diffusing around a sweet fra¬ 
grance ; standing peacefully and lowly in the midst 
of other flowers.” “ Remember,” says M’Cheyne, 
“ Moses wist not that the skin of his face shone. 
Looking at our own shining face is the bane of 
the spiritual life. O for closest communion with 
God, till soul and body, head and heart, shine with 
divine brilliancy! But O for a holy ignorance of 
their shining!” 


no Christian Work and Consolation. 

Paul speaks of “your work and labor of love.’* 
There can be no genuine Christian work without 
love. Love is its motor and its law. These phrases, 
love to God, love to man, appear simple enough at 
first glance. At certain moments they appear to 
us entirely practicable, and we wonder why they 
are not universally obeyed. But the Christian life 
is an art, in one sense: the most difficult, the high¬ 
est of all arts. It requires sedulous, constant cul¬ 
tivation. And to the end of this brief probationary 
existence we shall have need to reach forth to the 
things that are beyond, to wait humbly upon the 
Father of our spirits, for that gift of faith that com- 
eth not from within, from ourselves, but that is, in¬ 
deed, the gift of God. 


A Text from Guizot—Enthusiasm, iii 


XIII 


A TEXT FROM GUIZOT—ENTHUSIASM. 
UIZOT, in addressing the French Protestants 



VJT at one of their anniversaries in Paris, said, 
“ Be not afraid of enthusiasm ; you need it; you 
can do nothing effectively without it.” Guizot 
himself was one of the coolest of men by temper¬ 
ament, but he was a philosopher, and could judge 
of the means of success in public movements like 
those of the depressed Huguenots. He belonged 
to them, and was a leader of their most orthodox 
party. He saw in their lack of enthusiasm the se¬ 
cret of their little success. Curious as the fact may 
seem, it is, nevertheless, a fact, that though the 
French are the most enthusiastic people of Europe 
in politics, and especially in war, their Protestant¬ 
ism fails almost entirely of the national vivacity 
and energy. It needs heroes, willing to suffer for 
the cross, and there can be no heroism without en¬ 
thusiasm. French Protestantism was once full of 
enthusiasm, and it was then heroic indeed, both 
in the Church and on the battle-field, but it flags 
and lags now for want of its old animation. 

That most illustrious of women in literature, as Al¬ 
ison, Mackintosh, Byron, and Macaulay pronounce 


ii2 Christian Work and Consolation. 

her, Madame de Stael, contended that there could 
be no effective religion without enthusiasm. She 
concludes one of her most remarkable books (her 
“ Germany”) with two chapters on enthusiasm, 
which she almost identifies with religion itself, 
and which Mackintosh pronounces incomparably 
eloquent. She not only taught its importance 
in literature, faith, and all true life, but she exem¬ 
plified it. She was, perhaps, the most eloquent 
“ conversationist ” of her age, or any age — as all 
contemporary testimonies agree; and, though her 
transcendent powers were evident in her discourse, 
it is the general testimony of the writers of the 
period, that a certain sensibility, a certain enthusi¬ 
asm, gave an irresistible magnetism to her conver¬ 
sation, and rendered it far superior to her writings. 
Her words thrilled like electricity. The historian, 
Lacretelle, records, through forty pages, a conver¬ 
sation with her on religion, in an evening walk on 
the shores of the Lake of Geneva, which is one of 
the most eloquent passages in French literature. 
She once held a colloquial discussion at her table, 
in the Chateau of Coppet, on preaching, in which 
she not only defended enthusiasm in the pulpit, but 
exemplified its power in a manner so remarkable 
that the record of it is one of the most memorable 
illustrations of her conversational eloquence. We 
owe that record to the celebrated Berlin Professor 
of Geography, Carl Ritter, who was present, with 


A Text from Guizot—Enthusiasm. 113 

Schlegel, the critic, Sismondi, the historian, and 
other eminent men who were at the table. Sis¬ 
mondi undertook the defense of a preacher whom 
they had recently heard, and whose discourse was 
more didactic than religious. Sismondi’s faith was 
that of his friend and correspondent, Channing, of 
Boston. Religion, he contended, should be chiefly 
morality, not feeling, otherwise it will rest chiefly in 
feeling, and, having no principle, it will become in¬ 
sulated, and, therefore, fanciful and fanatical, and will 
again produce those excesses from which Europe suf¬ 
fered so many evils through so many ages. Religion, 
he affirmed, needs firmness, and the understanding 
can alone give it firmness. Madame de Stael re¬ 
sponded, admitting the importance of intelligence, 
in religion as in all things, but insisting that feeling 
and enthusiasm are absolutely essential to it; that 
there can be no genuine religion without them ; 
and that the pulpit should be the very throne of 
feeling and enthusiasm. “ Her inspiration,” says 
Ritter, “lasted through nearly an hour. Never in 
the whole course of my life have I felt more nerv¬ 
ous agitation. I had cramps even to the ends of 
my fingers. There was in her something of that 
power which Alcibiades attributes, in ‘ Plato’s Ban¬ 
quet,’ to Socrates.” The soul of this woman was 
full of fire, and though her mental power was of 
the highest order, it is her sensibility, her enthusi¬ 
asm, that renders immortal her virile thoughts. 

8 


114 Christian Work and Consolation. 

Enthusiasm is, then, a real virtue in the pulpit, 
in literature, in all life. It is a power, a charm in 
social life. It fuses surrounding hearts, and renders 
them malleable to the molding power of the master 
mind. It exalts theology above mere ethics, relig¬ 
ion above mere morality, into divine and living 
realities; and, of all places in the world, the pulpit 
should be its focal center. A man, standing be¬ 
tween heaven and earth, calling the multitudes 
from one to the other, what is he but a living cari¬ 
cature, without enthusiasm ? 

But is it not a matter of mere temperament, and, 
therefore, impossible to many men—men of cool, 
logical minds? And are not these men, however 
impassive, important defenders of the truth, and, 
therefore, legitimately in the pulpit? Now, as Sir 
Roger de Coverley used to affirm, “ there is much 
to be said on both sides” of this question. The 
logical preacher is, indeed, an important man; but 
is it not a commonplace fallacy to assume that 
the logical mind must necessarily be a frigid one? 
Should not a man who, by his logic, feels himself 
strong in his convictions be also strong in his 
earnestness—in the fervor of his convictions? What 
is true rhetoric but ignited logic ? The theoretical 
fallacy on the subject becomes a practical fallacy 
chiefly, we think, by the passive consent of the logical 
thinker. There are few men who would not kindle 
with inspiration under their logical argumentation 


A Text from Guizot—Enthusiasm. 115 

were it not that they so often assume that because 
they are logical they ought not, or cannot, be any 
thing else. Let them resolve, by God’s grace, to 
dispense warmth, emotion, with their logic, and they 
will soon find that there is a heart as well as a brain 
within them ; that God never designed that men 
who have strong heads should have stifled emotions. 
How many really able men fail precisely at this 
point! How often, toward the close of a strongly 
logical discourse, have intelligent hearers felt that 
now is the time for overwhelming power—that if 
the speaker would only strike home, from the van- 
tage ground of his reasoning, with real heart-ear¬ 
nestness, he would add potency to his reasoning. 

Many a man who now passes for a dry, ineffect¬ 
ive preacher, a mere doctrinal logician, would rise 
to the rank of a first-rate pulpit orator if he would 
only resolve to give a place to his strong feeling 
through the last ten minutes of his sermon. He 
could thus clinch his argumentative spikes and 
sweep down whatever has withstood the force of 
his logical battery. 

All men have hearts; all men are, therefore, sus¬ 
ceptible of this great power of enthusiasm; but it 
needs to be cherished. The logical speaker needs 
to aim at the use of it. He should pray for it. He 
has been promised the power from on high; let 
him pray for that, and he cannot fail of feeling and 
of making others feel. 


ii6 Christian Work and Consolation. 

We have not, however, wished to treat the sub¬ 
ject as applicable only to preaching. It is appro¬ 
priate to all religious labor, all religious life. What 
is a prayer-meeting without more or less enthu¬ 
siasm? What a missionary meeting? What the 
influence of a Sunday-school teacher over his pu¬ 
pils? What the influence of a Christian man in 
any sphere of life ? Religion is, indeed, a creed, in 
part; but it is also a sentiment. It lives in the af¬ 
fection not less than in the perception. It should 
be in both. Guizot was right, then, when he said, 
“ Be not afraid of enthusiasm—you can do nothing 
effectively without it.” 

Paul commends enthusiasm. “ Whatsoever ye 
do, do it heartily,” etc. “ It is good to be zealously 
affected,” etc. Enthusiasm is not fanaticism. The 
narrow, shallow streamlet babbles and throws its 
spray; the broad, deep river runs tranquilly but 
with overwhelming force. White heat is usually 
steady in its light. “ Heartily,” says Paul; he 
would have us put the energy of the heart into the 
conclusions of the mind, and thus give both full 
play in the life. There can be no heroism, no saint- 
ship, and, generally, no success in life, without en¬ 
thusiasm. 

Goethe considers it fundamental in education. 
His fiction, “Wilhelm Meister,” is a treatise on 
education, in the form of a romance. The upshot 
of the book may be expressed in three propositions: 


A Text from Guizot—Enthusiasm. 117 

first, ascertain the natural aptitudes or predilec¬ 
tions of the pupil; secondly, plan his destination, 
or business in life, in accordance with these; third¬ 
ly, as his education should be preparation for this 
destination, his education should be conformed to 
his natural aptitudes. His strongest argument for 
this theory is, that it secures the inclination on the 
side of the education and destination of the child; 
and, with the inclination thus secured, there will be 
enthusiasm in his aims, and, therefore, almost invari¬ 
ably, success. Few things wiser have been uttered on 
the subject of education. There is a certain extent 
of general education which all must pass through, 
in order to pass well in general society or common 
life, but this is mostly elementary; after this the 
whole training of the child should be such as his 
natural aptitudes justify. How much time and 
servile drudgery are now expended on education, 
or, rather, mis-education ! How many years on 
music, with young women, who may have no nat¬ 
ural capability ever to rise above mediocrity, or 
even to it, in that art—time enough to conduct 
them through the whole course of the natural sci¬ 
ences, or belles-lettres, or modern languages, or any 
thing else for which their natural aptitudes may 
better fit them ! The latter, sustained by a glad in¬ 
clination, would enable them to shine in any intel¬ 
ligent circle; the former fits them only for com¬ 
monplace performances, or for invidious criticism. 


118 Christian Work and Consolation. 

Paul’s injunction, then, of heartiness is fundamen¬ 
tal in education. 

But it applies also to ordinary life, apart from 
preliminary education for life. We have said that 
much of the discontent and wretchedness of life, 
and many of its failures, arise from the misplace¬ 
ment of men in their habitual pursuits. If they 
are in business which is not in accordance with 
their natural aptitudes they cannot put their 
hearts into it, and without the heart any habitual 
pursuit becomes a painful struggle. There is an 
immense amount of this misery in the world. Any 
pursuit, on the other hand, which enlists the affec¬ 
tions becomes a pleasure, a sort of recreation, and, 
therefore, is likely to be a success. There never 
was a wiser precept for common life than Paul’s 
exhortation to “ do it heartily;” but it presupposes 
that our pursuits admit of the fair play of our in¬ 
clination. It is wonderful how successful men have 
been in the most formidable difficulties where the 
heart has sustained and stimulated the other facul¬ 
ties, whether physical or mental. A measure of 
enthusiasm should enter into all our ordinary life. 
The average man is more heart than head; every 
thing that is worth doing at all is worth doing 
“ heartily.” This is not only the secret of pleas¬ 
ure in all good work, but it is nearly as much the 
secret of success. 

Still more important is Paul’s precept in the 


A Text from Guizot—Enthusiasm. 119 

religious life. Temperament has a great deal to do 
with religious fervor or zeal, doubtless ; but relig¬ 
ion is pre-eminently a matter of the heart; there 
can be no true religion without it. Even the faith 
that saves is not so much an exercise of the intel¬ 
lect, as a rule not so much dogmatic, as an exercise 
of the heart. “ With the heart man believeth unto 
righteousness.” Righteousness is in the life, but, 
according to Scripture, it proceeds from the heart. 
Is not the most obvious difference between suc¬ 
cessful and unsuccessful Christians precisely here— 
successful whether in the pulpit, in the humbler 
Christian labors, or in the Christian home? It 
may be unqualifiedly affirmed that the preacher is 
never unsuccessful when his capacity for earnest¬ 
ness is fully put into his sermon. His head may 
be in it, by the most sedulous previous study, but 
when he ascends the pulpit he finds it is naught if 
his heart do not vivify it. And so is it in any other 
sphere of labor—every-where in fine. “ Do it heart¬ 
ily,” is the supreme rule of success. Thank God, 
we all have hearts, however we may differ in men¬ 
tal capacity; we can all wield the chief power if our 
hearts be only right. 

And this suggests one remark more: this chief 
power applies in the lowliest as well as in the high¬ 
est spheres of life. Remember Paul's application 
of the precept. It was given to slaves ; and to such 
slaves as those of the Roman law, the most abso- 


120 Christian Work and Consolation. 

lutely enslaved of any the world ever saw. Even 
these Paul saw could exalt their humble, shackled 
lives by doing their drudgery “ heartily, as to the 
Lord.” All things in the Christian’s life should be 
“ done to the Lord and whatever is done to the 
Lord is done to the highest royalty in the universe, 
and bears a corresponding dignity. We are too apt 
to think that if we had some great endowment— 
great wealth, great social position, great talents— 
we would do great things for Christ and humanity; 
but, alas for us that we are so blind to the impor¬ 
tance of small things 1 They make up, as we have 
seen, the mass of things—the mass of working ma¬ 
terial in the universe. However humble thy lot, O 
man of God, work in it as for God and eternal re¬ 
wards ! Put thy heart into thy work, and the work 
itself will take proportions from thy heart; nay, 
from the very God that dwells in thy heart. 


PART SECOND. 


CHRISTIAN CONSOLATION. 




CONSOLATION. 


I. 

PEACE IN BELIEVING. 

H ITHERTO we have treated of Christian La¬ 
bor ; we turn now to Christian Consolation, a 
subject not more important, but perhaps more 
grateful. 

There are some truths which, like the flower in 
the bud, can be appreciated only when unfolded; 
there are others which, like the full-blown rose, 
present, themselves, their perfect beauty and fra¬ 
grance ; to attempt to unfold more their petals is 
to break them; we need but to behold them, and 
inhale their sweetness. We can enumerate their 
leaves, and admire them, but not improve them. 
The lapidary can add no new element to the 
diamond; he can only cut it in the lines of its nat¬ 
ural cleavage till it presents its natural facets, each 
facet pouring forth its pencil of beautified, of iri¬ 
descent light, as he holds it in the sun. The script¬ 
ural theory of human life is such a diamond truth 
— the regal Kohinoor truth of the moral world. 
For all things divine in our world are subservient 
to it — the Incarnation, the dispensation of the 



124 Christian Work and Consolation. 

Holy Spirit, the gift of the inspired oracles, the 
institution of the Church—life and death itself—all 
are for it; all are for the probationary preparation 
of man for higher worlds. Without it life and 
death would be an enigma, and, worse, an absurd¬ 
ity, a tragi-comedy. We have presented one of its 
phases. Let us look at another, a distinct but a 
conjoint facet. For though 

“Not enjoyment and not sorrow 
Are our destined end and way, 

But to act that each to-morrow 
Find us farther than to-day 

yet the evangelic theory of life does include en¬ 
joyment ; no religious or ethical theory is less 
cynical in this respect. It not only provides, it 
enjoins, happiness, as a necessary condition of an 
effective probationary life, a motive of its du¬ 
ties to some extent, and a support of its self- 
denials. 

But let us bear in mind that a probationary life 
necessarily implies tests, trials; its consolations 
must, therefore, largely consist of reliefs, of sup¬ 
ports not merely in beneficent activity, but in en¬ 
durance of evil. We shall consider it in both 
these respects. 

Benevolent activity is itself a source of happi¬ 
ness, for the benevolent affections are, as we have 
said, inherently felicitous, as the malicious ones are 
inherently miserable. Christianity recognizes and 


Peace in Believing. 125 

sanctifies this happiness, but it superadds other 
and ineffable consolations. 

The Scriptures continually speak of the com¬ 
fort, the rest, the peace, the joy of the conse¬ 
crated man. “ Learn of me; for I am meek and 
lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your 
souls.” “ Ask for the old paths, where is the good 
way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for 
your souls.” There not only “ remaineth a rest to 
the people of God,” but “we which have believed 
do enter into rest.” “ Rest in the Lord, and wait 
patiently for him.” “ Fear hath torment,” but 
'“ perfect love casteth out fear.” “ The fruit of the 
Spirit is love, joy, peace,” etc. “Acquaint now 
thyself with him, and be at peace.” “ Great peace 
have they which love thy law: and nothing shall 
offend them.” “ We have peace with God.” “ To 
be spiritually minded is peace.” “ The peace of 
God which passeth all understanding.” “ I will 
both lay me down in peace, and sleep: for thou, 
Lord, only makest me dwell in safety.” “ Right¬ 
eousness is sown in peace.” “ That my joy might 
remain in you, and that your joy might be full.” 
“ Your joy no man taketh from you.” “Ask, and 
ye shall receive, that your joy may be full.” “ In 
whom ... ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full 
of glory.” “ I am filled with comfort, I am exceed- 
ing joyful in all our tribulation.” “ Let all that put 
their trust in thee rejoice.” “ We have access by 


126 Christian Work and Consolation. 

faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice 
in hope of the glory of God.” “ Rejoice evermore.’’ 
“ Rejoice in the Lord always: and again I say, Re¬ 
joice.” “As sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.” Such 
is the common phraseology of the Gospel, such the 
very idiom of its spiritual vernacular. 

The authoress, Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, allud¬ 
ing to the revived interest of Protestant Christen¬ 
dom in the higher Christian life, and the consequent 
increased enjoyment of all life, asks: “ Is there, in 
fact, such a thing as an attainable habit of mind 
that it can remain at peace, no matter what exter¬ 
nal circumstances may be? No matter what wor¬ 
ries ; no matter what perplexities, what thwartings, 
what cares, what dangers; no matter what slanders, 
what revilings, what persecutions; is it possible to 
keep an immovable peace ? When suddenly called 
to die, or to face sorrows worse than death, is it 
possible to be still at peace? Yes, it is.” She dis¬ 
cussed the subject in an American journal as a 
sign of the times, and remarked, that “ evidences, 
at this time, through all Christendom, show cer¬ 
tainly that there is poured, from the heart of Jesus, 
a current of faith into the hearts of his people, 
stronger than all the currents of skepticism and un¬ 
belief. There are at this time, even in the very 
highest circles of England, men and women who 
have been led to that entire consecration of them¬ 
selves to Christ and his cause which the Bible sup- 


Peace in Believing. 


127 

poses.” She witnessed an example of this higher 
faith in the demeanor and blessed death, under 
her own roof, of an English clergyman. “ He be¬ 
longed,” she says, “ to that increasing class who are 
sometimes spoken of as Christians of the higher 
life; those for whom earthly care and sorrow have 
ceased, and who on earth have entered into the 
secret of that peace which Christ giveth. There 
was about his views of religious questions a peculiar 
freedom from prejudice and passion, and clearness 
of spiritual insight; and the personal impression he 
made was of a singular restfulness and sweetness of 
nature. The peace which passeth all understand¬ 
ing seemed to be the habit of his soul.” 

The authoress of “ The Schonberg-Cotta Family,” 
writing on the same subject in an English journal, 
remarks, that “ It seems to me this life is the normal, 
natural Christian life, which we all ought to be living, 
not merely a few of us; which we ought to be living 
always, and not merely now and then.” A just 
view of the case, indisputably; it was, as we have 
seen, the common life of the Church in the apostolic 
age, and was the secret of its success. There were 
two most obvious characteristics of the apostolic 
Christian life; first, entire consecration; and sec¬ 
ondly, absolute faith; and these are the postulates 
of the higher life, as taught by the modern apostles 
of scriptural holiness. Apart from the question of 
appellatives, or technical phrases, they are on the 


128 Christian Work and Consolation. 

right, the scriptural track, and we may bid them 
God-speed. 

They have, too, let us admit it, some justification 
of the discriminative phrase “ higher life,’ in the 
fact that though this life should be the common, 
the universal experience and example of Christen¬ 
dom, yet it confessedly is not. As a matter of 
fact it is really a “ higher life,” and were it to be¬ 
come common again, as it was in the primitive 
Church, we should have a new Christian era—an 
era of spiritual light and power and rapidly extend¬ 
ing propagandism and general joyousness of life. 
This is what the most prudent advocates of the 
“higher life” seem to be laboring, praying, and 
watching for. 

Again says this excellent writer: “ The tenses 
of Christian life are not mere preterit tenses—they 
are perfect and present. ‘ Thou hast redeemed us to 
God by thy blood ; . . . and hast made us . . . kings 
and priests,’ etc. That is, we are redeemed and do 
belong to God now. We are not our own, but his; 
dominion over sin is not a vague promise in the 
future, but a possibility and a possession now, in 
and through Him who lives in them that trust in Him . 
The consecrated, sacerdotal, sacrificial life is not 
for a future age, or a limited number; but for the 
whole Church, every moment, now and forever. It is 
simply the translation of possibilities into acts. As 
Coleridge said, ‘To restore a common-place truth to 


Peace in Believing. 


129 


its first uncommon luster, you need only translate it 
into action.’ That is, when the Master says, ‘Abide 
in me,’ we are not vaguely to reply, ‘ Enable me to 
abide in thee,’ but ‘ I do abide in thee; ’ not only 
‘ I will,’ far less ‘ I fear I shall not,’ but now, at this 
moment, ‘ I do.’ And the Master’s response is, ‘ He 
that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bring- 
eth forth much fruit.’ The beneficences and endur¬ 
ances and sacrifices of the believing, obedient life 
are not constructed painfully as works, but spring 
forth naturally as fruit. It is not, ‘that ye may 
have a little broken, interrupted joy,’ but that ‘my 
joy may abide’ in you, and that ‘your joy may be 
full.’ It is no new thing; yet now it seems to me 
as if I had only half believed it. I never believed 
in any Saviour but a Saviour from sin; I never 
dreamed of any salvation but a salvation from 
sin; yet now every thing, every word of the Bible, 
every relation of human life, every thing in nat¬ 
ure —old familiar hymns, the creeds, the services of 
the Church, the holy communion—glows, becomes 
translucent with new glory and significance. Yes, 
thus it is to those who “ walk in the light as he is 
in the light ’’—who not merely occasionally emerge 
into it, but, by habitual consecration and faith, 
live in it. And to them is the pledge given that, 
while they do so, “The blood of Jesus Christ his 
Son cleanseth ” them “ from all sin.” 

But our popular language on the subject, espe- 
9 


130 Christian Work and Consolation. 

dally regarding spiritual enjoyments, needs to be 
guarded. Much is said about the “ rest of faith ”— 
much that is very precious. The phrase is sub¬ 
stantially scriptural. “ I will give you rest,” is 
the pledge of the Master to those that come unto 
him, even though they be such as labor and are 
heavy laden. Under the old dispensation itself 
there was a divine experience which afforded per¬ 
fect peace, and a Hebrew saint could say, “ Thou 
wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed 
on thee: because he trusteth in thee ”—the blessing 
and its conditional cause being both affirmed. Now 
this blessed consolation cannot be too much ex¬ 
alted. It is the peace which the world cannot give 
nor take away. It may abide with us forever, even 
as the Comforter, which imparts it, does with the 
faithful soul. But to teach that it is entire exemp¬ 
tion from trial would certainly be a dangerous and 
unscriptural inference. Or to teach that the trial 
may exist, but is not felt by the sanctified soul, is 
equally illogical; for what kind of a trial would it 
then be ? The holiest souls attest the contrary. 

The De Imitatioiie, by a Kempis, is as noted for 
its extraordinary discrimination of the spiritual ex¬ 
periences and affections of the soul, as Shakespeare’s 
writings are for his knowledge of the natural pas¬ 
sions and affections. No book exalts more the 
gracious enjoyments of the devout heart; and ear¬ 
nest Christians have adopted it as a devotional 


Peace in Believing. 


131 

manual in all denominations, all languages; but 
perhaps in nothing does the pious writer show his 
wisdom more than in the care with which he guards 
his readers against mistaking inward trials for sin, 
or signs of the loss of grace; and shows the man¬ 
ner in which peace, or rest of soul, may be main¬ 
tained, not only amid trials, but amid felt trials. 
“ Where,” he asks, “ is the man who holds himself 
on his guard with such circumspection, that he 
never falls into some surprise or some pain of mind 
which disquiets him ? But, O Lord, he who places 
his confidence in thee, and seeks thee with a sincere 
and simple heart, shall be always sheltered in such 
reverses! Whatever affliction or embarrassment 
may befall him, thou wilt draw him out of it; thou 
wilt, at least, comfort him in his suffering, for thou 
wilt never abandon those who hope in thee. In 
truth, we are but fragile men, though we may pass 
for angels in the esteem of others. To whom, there¬ 
fore, ought I to confide myself, but to thee, O Lord, 
my God!” 

And yet in all trials, he contends that the faith¬ 
ful soul may keep the “ peace of God which passeth 
all understanding.” For the Rest of Faith is a pro¬ 
foundly interior experience. There is an inmost 
citadel of the soul where faith remains steadfast and 
triumphant amid whatever storm. The impregna¬ 
ble fortress may be besieged at every exterior point; 
the intrenched soldier may hear the din of the as- 


132 Christian Work and Consolation. 

sault; its confusion may shake the walls ; its smoke 
may even obscure the light; but he knows he is 
safe; he can rest in his security, in spite of the 
tumult which assails, not merely his defenses, but 
his senses also. He knows that the light which is 
obscured by the dust and smoke of battle still shines 
on above it all, and will again shed its radiance 
through the darkened port-holes. 

The holy monk goes very far in his precautions 
on this subject. He says that it is not an infre¬ 
quent trial of believers to be deprived temporarily 
of the “ sweetness ” of the sensible consolations of 
religion itself—that this is one of the Master’s ways 
of testing his servants, and that at such times the 
soul should remain quiet in faith and patience, 
“ waiting upon the Lord.” “ Believest thou, my 
son, always to have, when thou wiliest, spiritual 
joys and consolations ? My greatest saints have 
been deprived of them ; attacked by a crowd of 
temptations, they have sometimes become a bur¬ 
den to themselves, and suffered surprising relaxa¬ 
tions of feeling; but they have possessed and sus¬ 
tained their souls in patience, resigning themselves 
to my care; they have known that there is no pro¬ 
portion between present sufferings and the ‘ glory 
which shall follow.’ I have said to thee often, and 
I repeat to thee, Kid thee of thyself, cast off thy 
egotism, abandon thyself to me, and thou shalt 
have a profound spiritual peace. Give all for all; 


Peace in Believing. 


i 33 


demand nothing; attach thyself to me without di¬ 
vision of mind, and with constancy, and thou shalt 
possess me. Then thy heart shall be free, and 
darkness shall cover thee no more/' 

Two remarks more: First, however desirable 
feeling may be, remember that it is uncertain, and 
is not, therefore, to be taken as a test of spiritual 
experience. It depends greatly on temperament 
and on accidental physical circumstances. Faith 
may abide in its absence, and faith is the condition 
of acceptance with God through Christ. There¬ 
fore, secondly, it is the failure of faith, not of feel¬ 
ing, that involves moral risk. “ Whatsoever is not 
of faith is sin.” In the darkest hour of spiritual 
trial retain firmly thy faith. Nothing can be more 
rational than that thou shouldst do so, for God can 
never fail thee. Say ever, “ Though thou slay me, 
yet will I trust thee.” Thou shalt thus have the 
rest of faith. There can be peace without joy. 
Joy will come to thee in due time, but be not 
eager, be not anxious for it; rest quietly through 
all trials, in God, by faith, and remember that no 
faith can be more acceptable to him than that 
which trusts him in the extremity of suffering. 


134 Christian Work and Consolation. 


II. 


CHRISTIAN ASSURANCE. 
HRISTIANITY, as a whole, is a system of 



consolation for good men. Its provisions 
and promises are, in this respect, exceeding great 
and precious. But, apart from these, it has one 
characteristic which is singularly conspicuous and 
distinctive, paralleled in no other recorded system 
of religion or ethics. The familiar appellatives 
of its whole triune Godhead are endearing titles 
of benignity and tenderness, “ very full of com¬ 
fort.” Its God is the Father, the Saviour, the 
Comforter. “ Our Father, which art in heaven,” 
(Matt, vi, 9;) “Christ our Saviour,” (Tit. iii, 6;) 
“ The Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom 
the Father will send in my name.” John xiv, 26. 
Where do we find similar appellatives in any other 
religion known among men? And what an attesta¬ 
tion is it of the divine truthfulness of the system, 
that it thus brings down its most august concep¬ 
tions to the style of the best affections, the most 
tender and yet most anxious needs of our common, 
suffering humanity? St. John must have written 
with tenderness, perhaps with grateful tears, that 
its “ God is love.” 


Christian Assurance. 


i 35 

But the Spirit is especially designated as the 
Comforter, giving light to benighted souls, guid¬ 
ance to perplexed souls, peace to troubled souls. 
All his offices are consolatory. It is not our de¬ 
sign here to treat of them in detail. We confine 
ourselves to one which may be pronounced his 
most consolatory function—the “witness” which 
he “ beareth with our spirit, that we are the chil¬ 
dren of God.” Rom. viii, 16. 

Carlyle, in his “Life of Sterling,” tells an anec¬ 
dote of a poor Wesleyan collier, who offered his 
life for a brother workman, in circumstances which 
rendered the sacrifice a rarely noble one, and 
yet the only reason which could justify the con¬ 
duct of the Wesleyan is made, by both Carlyle 
and Sterling, to detract from the heroic deed. 
There was room but for one more person in the 
basket, or elevator, which was hastily receiving the 
colliers ; death was inevitable to one or the other 
of the two men. The Wesleyan, knowing that 
his fellow-workman was unprepared for it, com¬ 
pelled him to get into the basket, and, exhorting 
him to repent and lead a new life, turned around 
and confronted the overwhelming ruin. He as¬ 
sured the escaping workman that he possessed the 
“ witness of the Spirit,” and felt safe for the next 
w T orld. When Sterling first learned the fact it pro¬ 
duced a profound impression on his skeptical mind, 
but when he heard of the “ witness of the Spirit ” 


136 Christian Work and Consolation. 

—the collier’s reason for his self-sacrifice in behalf 
of a fellow-creature—the heroism of the exam¬ 
ple was spoiled. It was then only an instance of 
self-conceit, of self-righteousness, or, at best, of 
self-delusion. 

Such is the distorted vision, the real self-delusion, 
with which skepticism looks at the most highly 
spiritual truths. From an enlightened theological 
stand-point—from the stand-point of an evangelical 
experience—the reasoning of the pious Wesleyan 
was perfectly logical, and as perfectly scriptural. 
There was no more self-conceit in it than in Paul’s 
declaration that he “ desired ” to die and “ be with 
Christ;” or in what he declared of the apostolic 
Christians, that they knew “ that if” this “ earthly 
house of” their “ tabernacle were dissolved, we have 
a building of God,... eternal in the heavens.” Had 
the two philosophic skeptics known the religious 
history of the Wesleyan, or the spiritual history of 
any really regenerated soul, they would have known 
that his confidence had been attained through the 
deepest self-abasement, with heart-broken contri¬ 
tion, and that it was sustained only by the gratuit¬ 
ous grace of God. He felt, indeed, that he was 
“ saved,” but only “ by grace through faith—not of 
himself, it was the gift of God.” 

Such is the peculiarity, the essential rationality 
and glory, of the evangelic system. It abases self 
and at the same time sanctifies and consoles it. It 


Christian Assurance. 


i 37 


gives triumphant confidence to religious hope, and 
at the same time allows of “ no confidence in the 
flesh.” 

All orthodox Churches admit the doctrine of 
assurance, or the witness of the Spirit, though 
most of them consider it more an ideal than a real 
fact of the Christian life; all admit, however, that 
it is sometimes attained by individual saints. The 
Greek Church, the Latin Church, the great reform¬ 
ers, the rigid old Calvinistic divines, admit it. Ed¬ 
wards believed in it, and believed that his own 
saintly wife possessed it. It has been a special dis¬ 
tinction of the evangelical Church of our times to 
revive and spread the doctrine as a matter of prac¬ 
ticable experience for all saints. Methodism should 
prize as a pre-eminent honor its mission in this re¬ 
spect. It has been leavening by it the religious 
life of Anglo-Saxon Christendom, and, it would 
seem, by grateful signs of the times, that this 
truth, together with that of personal sanctification, 
may yet restore generally the primitive spiritual 
life of Christianity—the life of clear spiritual vision, 
of entire consecration, of joyous and adoring as¬ 
surance. 

One of the most noted philosophical writers of 
our age, Sir William Hamilton, declares that “As¬ 
surance, personal assurance, special faith, (the feel¬ 
ing of certainty that God is propitious to me, that 
my sins are forgiven, fiducia, plerophoria fidei, fides 


138 Christian Work and Consolation. 

specialise assurance,) was long universally held in 
the Protestant communities to be the criterion and 
condition of a true or saving faith. Luther de¬ 
clares that ‘ He who hath not assurance spews faith 
out;’ and Melanchthon, that ‘ Assurance is the dis¬ 
criminating line of Christianity from heathenism.’ 
Assurance is, indeed, the punctum saliens of Lu¬ 
ther’s system; and unacquaintance with this, his 
great central doctrine, is one prime cause of the 
chronic misrepresentation which runs through our 
recent histories of Luther and the Reformation. 
Assurance is no less strenuously maintained by 
Calvin, is held even by Arminians, and stands es¬ 
sentially part and parcel of all the confessions of all 
the Churches of the Reformation down to the 
Westminster Assembly. In the English, and, more 
particularly, in the Irish Establishment, assurance 
still stands a necessary tenet of ecclesiastical belief. 
Assurance was, consequently, held by all the older 
Anglican Churchmen, of whom Hooker may stand 
for the example; but assurance is now openly dis¬ 
avowed, without scruple, by Anglican Churchmen, 
high and low, when apprehended ; but of these 
many are incognizant of the opinion, its import, its 
history, and even its name.” 

How explicit is this language of religious confi¬ 
dence in the Holy Scriptures ! “ Cast not away 

therefore your confidence, which hath great rec¬ 
ompense of reward.” '‘Christ Jesus our Lord: in 


Christian Assurance. 


i 39 

whom we have boldness and access with confidence 
by the faith of him.” “ In the fear of the Lord is 
strong confidence.” “ Hold fast the confidence 
and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end.” 

“ Therefore we are always confident ... we are 
confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent 
from the body, and to be present with the Lord.” 
“ The effect of righteousness is quietness and as¬ 
surance forever.” “The full assurance of hope,” 
“ full assurance of faith.” “ He that believeth 
on the Son of God hath the witness in himself.” 
Abel “ obtained witness that he was righteous, 
God testifying of his gifts.” “ The Spirit itself 
beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the 
children of God.” “ We know that we have passed 
from death unto life.” There is hardly any end 
to the enumeration. And the primitive Chris¬ 
tian life was correspondent with these teachings. 
They were the familiar phraseology of the saints. 
The Church must return to their old use and old 
consolation; the world is led astray about Chris¬ 
tianity by the dubious, ambiguous language of its 
professors. They should ever have the language 
of modesty, but never the language of doubt. 
Christian experience is a positive matter of fact, 
and should have positive attestation in the per¬ 
sonal history of all believers. It is thy precious 
privilege, O child of God, to know whom thou hast 
believed, and to be persuaded that he will “ keep 


140 Christian Work and Consolation. 

that which” thou hast “committed unto him 
against that day”—remembering that this is not 
of works, but of grace—through faith. Wait not 
to attain it at a maturer stage of Christian experi¬ 
ence ; pray and believe for it now, and according 
to thy faith shall it be unto thee. 


The Discipline of Affliction. 


141 


III. 

THE DISCIPLINE OF AFFLICTION. 


QOME one has beautifully said that the afflic- 
^ tions of a child of God are the shadows cast 
upon his pathway by the overspread wings of guard¬ 
ian angels. The thought, if not the metaphor, is 
scriptural. Revelation does transform what hea¬ 
thenism, or philosophy itself, would consider male¬ 
dictions into benedictions. 

The interpretation which the Scriptures give of 
affliction is peculiar to them; and is so unique and 
consolatory as to deserve a place among the “ Evi¬ 
dences.” No religion, teaching a different view of 
the trials of human life, is fitted to the actual con¬ 
dition of man. 

Some of the highest theological authorities, 
among them Warburton and Whately, have taught 
that temporal blessings were the only incentives to 
righteousness presented by the Hebrew faith—that 
revelation was not sufficiently developed under the 
Judaic dispensation for the more spiritual motives. 
The Psalms, however, show that afflictions were 
not considered as simply evils by the saints of the 
Old Testament. The Psalms are the best key to 
the spiritual life of that dispensation. What a dif- 


142 Christian Work and Consolation. 

ferent view would we have of it but for these 
rapturous, heart-uttered lyrics! They show that 
piety was substantially the same under both dis¬ 
pensations. Especially do they show this in regard 
to the sanctified discipline of trials. Afflictions 
were no maledictions to David. “ Before I was 
afflicted,” he says, “ I went astray: but now have I 
kept thy word.” The New Testament but ex¬ 
pounds this view when it declares that “ whom the 
Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every 
son whom he receiveth. If ye endure chastening, 
God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is 
he whom the Father chasteneth not ? ... If ye be 
without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, 
then are ye bastards, not sons.” 

Paul gives the true analysis of the subject when 
he says: “ Now no chastening for the present 
seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless, 
afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of right¬ 
eousness unto them which are exercised thereby.” 
He sublimely enlarges the statement when he af¬ 
firms that, “ Our light affliction, which is but for a 
moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and 
eternal weight of glory.” And hence Peter declares 
that “ the trial of your faith ” is “ much more pre¬ 
cious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried 
with fire,” and he exhorts the saints, “ Beloved, 
think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which 
is to try you . . . but rejoice, inasmuch as ye are 


The Discipline of Affliction. 143 

partakers of Christ’s sufferings ; that, when his 
glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with 
exceeding joy.” And the Church triumphant, seen 
of John in heaven, was composed of those who had 
come out of great tribulation. “ We glory,” ex¬ 
claims Paul, “ in tribulations also.” 

In fine, though Christianity is not the religion 
of suffering, in the sense of the self-imposed, as¬ 
cetic miseries of popery—a Manichean tradition 
which has deplorably deformed religion—yet it is 
a religion for the suffering, in the sense of its con¬ 
solatory sanctification of affliction. And in this 
respect it is in complete accord with the actual, the 
universal conditions of human life. There has, prob¬ 
ably, never been any great development of character 
on earth without suffering. We certainly cannot 
conceive of any perfect Christian character without 
it. Perhaps we may even say that there can hard¬ 
ly be any very profound sense of spiritual comfort 
without it. “ Without sorrow,” says a Kempis, 
“ none liveth in love.” May we not also say that 
without it none liveth in peace ? It is a gracious, 
though it may be a grievous, education. It con¬ 
firms our moral strength by testing it. It proves 
to us the preciousness of our religious supports and 
consolations by giving them occasions of exercise. 
It corrects our worldly tendencies. It imposes the 
discipline of self-denial, the noblest regimen of the 
soul. It reveals to us higher truths than we could 


144 Christian Work and Consolation. 

ever attain in a life of complete content. It is not 
in the noontide light, but only in the midnight 
darkness, that the stellar worlds are revealed to us 
and the universe unveiled. “ There aloft,” says 
Jean Paul Richter, “ the fogs of our days must, 
one day, be resolved into stars, even as the Milky 
Way parts into suns.” 

“ Sour godliness,” as it has been called, is not an 
experience for this age of the world, any more than 
it was for the apostolic age. “ Look always on 
the bright side,” says some one, “ for it is the right 
side.” Of course it is, for the genuine Christian. 
With heaven opening, in its radiant and endless 
vistas, at the end of our life of probation, why 
should we not go on through whatever trials, 
with songs and everlasting joy upon our heads ? 
For the ransomed of the Lord shall . . . obtain joy 
and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee 
away. 

“ Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down, 
and the feeble knees.” Accept thy lot, suffering 
child of God, whatever may be its trials; be, by the 
grace of God, made perfect through suffering, like 
thy Master. Mar not the sacred discipline by impa¬ 
tience or murmuring. And be reminded, also, that 
there is a holy ministry in suffering; the lessons 
of thine, to all around thee—to the pastor that 
waits at thy bedside, to the Church that prays for 
thee, to the dear ones that weep for thee, and, by 


The Discipline of Affliction. 145 

sympathy, share thy anguish—may be a savor of 
life unto life. 

You sometimes wonder, doubtless, that he, your 
all-merciful Father, should try you so severely. 
You are tempted to think that no one around you 
has so heavy a burden to bear as you. Perhaps 
even the fallacious idea of the Jews in the case of 
the sufferer whom Christ healed—that for the sins 
of himself or his parents he was afflicted—may be¬ 
set you, and you may thus be led to suspect that 
you are enduring divine judgments rather than pa¬ 
ternal chastenings. Remember Christ’s rebuke of 
that error. Many of our afflictions do unquestion¬ 
ably spring from our own conduct or that of our 
ancestors; but, even in such cases, to the believing 
sufferer, affliction is but fatherly chastisement, and 
becomes a sanctifying discipline, compatible with 
the highest spiritual consolations. Banish, then, 
all distrust of your Lord. 

Remember well this scriptural theory of afflic¬ 
tion. How clear it is throughout the New Testa¬ 
ment ! And how it contradicts our timid appre¬ 
hensions! We might, indeed, readily suspect, in 
many of the severer and unrelieved and unrelieva- 
ble sufferings of life, that we are accursed rather 
than blessed, were it not for the uniform refutation 
of that suspicion by the word of God. But the 
Scriptures assure us that as our Redeemer him¬ 
self was made perfect by suffering, so we are to be 
10 


146 Christian Work and Consolation. 

partakers of his sufferings before we are partakers 
of his glory. The psalmist often gives thanks for 
his afflictions. It was by the discipline of suffer 
ing that he was made humble and obedient. 
Understand, then, that to a penitent soul affliction 
becomes fatherly and disciplinary chastening, not 
punishment. 

A whole book of the sacred canon is devoted to 
this subject—quite an anomalous fact in the canon 
—and the whole significance of that book is, that 
suffering, by the child of God, is blessing, though 
in disguise, and that out of it all there will, at 
last, be a happy issue—an issue of inconceivable, 
compensatory felicity—a glory which shall follow, 
and with the greatness of which the greatness of 
the greatest affliction cannot be compared. It was 
this view of the scriptural theory of the subject that 
rendered the early saints so triumphant in their ex¬ 
treme, their hardly intermitted trials. They were 
not willing to accept deliverance, for they looked to 
the final consummation. 

Again, having well settled in your mind this 
scriptural doctrine of affliction, do not think too 
much about your trials. Remember that the di¬ 
vine Teacher himself bids you not to take thought 
for the morrow, for the morrow will take thought 
for itself: “ Sufficient unto the day is the evil there¬ 
of.” Of course he forbids not prudent forethought, 
and the measures of prevention or relief which it 


The Discipline of Affliction. 


i47 


may suggest, but this is very different from that 
habit of anxious brooding over one’s afflictions, 
and especially over possible adversities of the fu¬ 
ture, to which our weak hearts are so liable, and 
which makes nine tenths of the miseries of life. 
“ Take no thought for the morrow,” means take no 
anxious thought of it. Neither Zeno nor Epicurus 
ever taught a better philosophy of happiness than 
this. And how admirably it fits in with the whole 
“ analogy ” of the Christian system ! That system 
requires us to be joyous in the Lord, to count not 
our very lives dear unto us in questions of duty, 
and, above all, to live by faith, faith being pre¬ 
eminently trust. An anxious, brooding, distrust¬ 
ful mind, how can it exemplify the evangelic sys¬ 
tem ? Let us beware that we sin not in this respect. 
“ Cast all your care on him, for he careth for you,” 
is a divine command ; let us not practically deny 
God’s word before our families and friends by de¬ 
clining so gracious and so positive a counsel. No 
faith is more acceptable to him, or more sublime 
before men and angels, than that which holds 
trustfully to the hand of God in uttermost adver¬ 
sity. And none, too, is more logical, for can the 
all-powerful and all-wise and all-present and all- 
gracious God be defeated by any of our exigencies ? 
Can any power of evil force him to belie his word ? 
And does not his word pledge his help in our ex¬ 
tremity ? Was not the greatest of the patristic 


148 Christian Work and Consolation. 

thinkers, Augustine, scripturally right when he 
wrote, as a lesson of the word of God and of the 
lives of his saints, that “ Man’s extremity is God’s 
opportunity?” Now, we know it can be replied 
that all this is easier said than done. But it can 
be done; thousands and hundreds of thousands of 
saintly souls have proved it in forms of trial which 
cannot be surpassed by any that are possible to our 
modern life. 

Resignation is one of the most graceful of the 
Christian graces. Since Canon Farrar’s new edi¬ 
tion of the De Imitatione Christi , much has been 
said in our religious journals about that remarkable 
little book. What is the secret of its peculiar, 
magnetic charm ? has often been asked. We think 
it is chiefly in its lessons of spiritual peace, though 
they are substantially lessons of self-denial, and 
especially of resignation. Evil is so universal that 
whatsoever helps our resignation, helps us toward 
peace or rest; and rest unto our souls is the uni¬ 
versal craving of thoughtful minds. Most men 
would be willing to accept habitual peace as suffi¬ 
cient, apart from all joy; for is not peace really a 
kind of tranquilized joy—joy serene, settled and 
abiding ? 

In a remarkable chapter of the Imitatione, headed, 
“ In every thing we desire, how we ought to stand 
affected, and what we ought to say,” we have a 
striking exhibition of this identity of resignation 


The Discipline of Affliction. 149 

with rest. It is an intensely fervent plea for. 
resignation ; for, to the devout Monk, resignation 
was rest, and rest the entirest comfort. It ends 
with a prayer in form, (all his pages are a sort of 
informal prayer, or converse with God,) which con¬ 
cludes like a decadence of music dying away in 
the very expression of the rest, or peace, for which 
it has been pleading. “ Grant,” it says, “ that I 
may die to all things that are in the world, and, 
for thy sake, love to be contemned, and not known 
in this generation. Grant to me, above all things 
that can be desired, to rest in thee, and in thee to 
have my heart and peace. Thou art the true peace 
of the heart; thou its only rest; out of thee all 
things are hard and restless. In this very peace— 
in thee—the one chief, eternal good, I will sleep 
and rest. Amen.” And we can imagine that we 
see the venerable, mediaeval saint dropping his pen, 
reclining back on his hard, monastic bed, and sink¬ 
ing peacefully into this sleep and rest. “ Thou giv- 
est thy beloved sleep,” said a much older saint. 

The soul may maintain the inward rest of faith 
in any exterior storm. “ In me,” says Christ, “ ye 
might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribu¬ 
lation : but be of good cheer; I have overcome the 
world.” Could there be more precious words ? 
Press them to thy heart, and be comforted, O 
weary sufferer! 


« 


150 Christian Work and Consolation. 


IV. 

A TEXT FROM LUTHER. 


E NDEAVOR, we repeat, not to think too 
much of your afflictions. 

Luther had a deep, tender soul, though at times 
rough in its expression. His experience of divine 
things was profound, as his writings and his Table 
Talk show. He knew especially what temptation 
is, and he had a heroic, sometimes even a humor¬ 
ous, way of confounding Satan, whom he hated with 
hearty detestation as the enemy of all righteous¬ 
ness. He usually put him to flight by prayer, but 
sometimes added music, and “fiddled him away;” 
for he believed the devils have a peculiar dislike for 
sacred music, and Luther was a born musician. Not 
unfrequently he threw Scripture texts at the adver¬ 
sary, as he did his inkstand, in the castle of Wart- 
burg, where the stain on the wall is still pointed 
out to visitors. 

Knowing well the human heart, and the subtle¬ 
ties of temptation, his writings abound in re¬ 
markably apt though rudely expressed maxims of 
wisdom on the Christian life, especially in diffi¬ 
culties of which he had himself abundant experi¬ 
ence. Many a gem of apposite and consolatory 


A Text from Luther. 15 i 

counsel could be gathered from his books—sen¬ 
tences of deepest spiritual insight. Here is one, 
which is applicable to the ordinary Christian life, and 
which, if habitually applied, would relieve innumer¬ 
able perplexities of devout but tried souls : 

“ When anxious thoughts come you should ask 
yourself in what commandment is it written that 
I should think of these things? Thou, O devil, 
wouldst have me care for myself, but I must cast 
my care on God, for he careth for me.” The great 
reformer knew that this was scriptural truth; but he 
knew more, he knew it to be experimentally valid, 
for he had tested it in hundreds of instances in his 
own much-tried life. He was sometimes in perplex¬ 
ities out of which there was no visible escape, for 
he had, in his great work, to contend with “ princi¬ 
palities and powers ” of earth, as well as of hell; 
with spiritual perverseness in high places among 
his coadjutors as well as among his opposers; and 
with the morbid difficulties of his own naturally 
melancholic temperament. Often had he to stand 
still and leave all to Providence, and then he, sooner 
or later, saw the salvation of God. So often had 
he this consolatory experience, that the passage 
here cited may be taken as one of the most intimate 
and confident utterances of his own inward life. 

From a rational, or philosophic stand-point, this 
advice—to practically ignore certain actual and 
hard-pressing evils—would be considered wise. It is 


152 Christian Work and Consolation. 

accepting the inevitable. It is the central idea 
of the Stoic philosophy, though it is far from 
Stoicism, in the true Christian life. Philosophy, 
while teaching it, cannot exemplify it, except in rare 
cases where peculiar constitutional temperament is 
mistaken for philosophic force of will. If Epictetus 
or Seneca could exemplify it as well as teach it, 
the reason would be found rather in their natural 
idiosyncrasies, as science calls them, than in moral, 
inward support, or in trust in divine Providence, 
or in consolatory ideas of the disciplinary effect 
and future compensation of trials. The latter 
views are peculiar to the Christian stand-point; and 
at this stand-point, the soul, living by faith, can 
stand still and see the salvation of God amid the 
most overwhelming afflictions; can exemplify, as 
one of the simplest maxims of the Christian life, 
the lesson of the reformer. 

“ Cast all thy care,” then, “ upon him,” tried and 
suffering soul, “for he careth for thee”—even thy 
heaviest burden, that of thy sins. Remember that 
passage, of boundless consolatory meaning: He bore 
our sins in his own body on the tree. If he bore 
them, let us be assured, that we need not bear them 
ourselves. He is infinitely sufficient; we only de¬ 
tract from his mediation, and mock his mercy by at¬ 
tempting, in our weakness, to share the burden with 
him. We have but to repent of them and trust in him 
with absolute faith, and then go in peace and sin no 


A Text from Luther. 


i53 


more. If the tempter recalls them, or, as is often a 
subtle artifice with him, recalls some one, or more, 
of them in particular, because of their special or dis¬ 
couraging nature, bring thou to thy remembrance 
that other gracious truth, “ the blood of Jesus Christ 
... cleanseth us from all sin.” Luther had this sort 
of temptation, and he says that he often blessed God 
for the word all in that text. Swedenborg found 
this kind of temptation so frequent with himself 
and others, as to believe, at last, that there are par¬ 
ticular demons who undertake the task of torment¬ 
ing and overthrowing renewed souls, by holding fast 
in their memories, or consciences, particular defects 
or sins of their past lives. But faith can exorcise 
all demons. Christ bore our sins in his own body 
on the tree; his blood cleanseth from all sin; say 
then, with Luther, “ In what commandment is it 
written that I should think of these things ? Thou, 
O devil, wouldst have me care for myself, but I cast 
my care on God, who careth for me!” 

When Bunyan’s Pilgrim, bearing his sins in a 
pack on his back, arrives at a point on his way 
where he beholds the cross, his burden is loosed, 
falls off, and rolls into the neighboring sepulcher, 
where it is buried out of sight forever. What, if 
the author had represented him as, afterward, going 
back for it, and rebuckling it upon his shoulders, to 
bear it wearily along the remainder of his pilgrim¬ 
age ? He would have spoiled both the theology 


154 Christian Work and Consolation. 

and artistic beauty of his allegory. But how 
many Christians of feeble faith do thus, after re¬ 
pentance and pardon, resume the burden of their 
old sins, and bear it along their entire way to the 
grave! Let it be buried out of sight, in the sep¬ 
ulcher of the Redeemer! Sweet contrition may, 
indeed, go with the purified soul to the gate of 
heaven, if not into it, but not remorse, not the sense 
of abiding guilt. Scriptural pardon cancels guilt. 
It is justification ; and “ being justified by faith, we 
have peace with God.” 

And so with other trials. There are not a few 
through which you cannot see your way, but must 
absolutely trust the issue to God. In all such cases 
cease to care for the morrow—for the result. Be 
careful for nothing of this kind, according to our 
Lord’s precept; for it is precisely in such cases that 
God would try your faith, and make it complete; 
and be assured that nothing is more consolatory, 
and nothing more wise, than absolute faith in him. 
It has made all the heroes, the saints, and martyrs 
of Christian history. It is the only true philosophy 
against affliction that is practicable to man. Throw 
thyself, then, absolutely into the infinite arms of 
God, and be at perfect peace. Wait and rest in 
him. He must be overthrown before thou canst be. 

Death, especially, is usually supposed to be one 
of these things—the very consummation of earthly 
evil—though it is probable that, in the world be- 


A Text from Luther. 


i55 


yond, it is seen to be the most precious blessing to 
man on earth, save the redemption of his soul; for 
through it we enter into eternal life. Many men, 
even good men, are all their life-time subject to 
bondage through fear of death, notwithstanding 
an apostle has declared expressly that Christianity 
is emancipation from this servile weakness. Here 
again apply Luther’s counsel. Don’t think of the 
subject when it is thus oppressive to you; leave it 
absolutely to God, and resolve to “live while you 
live ” a full, strenuous, joyous, productive life. God 
will take care of you in death, giving you grace to 
die with, as he gives grace to live with. You will 
probably be surprised at the sweet accordance of 
your soul with the Father’s will, when the blessed 
change shall come ; or, more probably still, you may 
know little or nothing about it till you find it is all 
over—painlessly passed; and the good life, trust¬ 
fully and joyously begun on earth, flows evenly on 
through the heavenly spheres and the everlasting 
cycles. If thy faith is perfect, thy love will be also, 
and “ perfect love casteth out fear ”—even this fear. 

Do not attempt to supersede God’s care of thee 
by thine own carefulness. When Peter was start¬ 
led by his Lord’s repeated question—“ Lovest thou 
me?”—his conclusive reply was, “Thou knowest 
all things; thou knowest that I love thee.” Let 
us not suppose for a moment that such phrases 
come to us from the hyperbolical idioms of the 


156 Christian Work and Consolation. 

East; they are, rather, attempts to get at exact ex¬ 
pressions of the divine nature. God is the Abso¬ 
lute, and when we speak of his omniscience, we 
mean literally that he knows all things. It follows, 
then, that he knows the smallest as well as the 
greatest things—that, literally, nothing, however 
small, can escape his cognizance. For if any thing, 
however small, should escape his notice, then he 
would be so far short of omniscient, or ^//-know¬ 
ing; and to be, in any degree, short of infinite 
knowledge, would imply that he is finite in knowl¬ 
edge. To be finite is to be infinitely short of infin¬ 
ity; for the finite has a limit, the infinite has no 
limit. To miss the target by one inch, is to miss 
it as really as to miss it by a hundred. 

It is, then, not merely a fact, but a necessity, that 
God, as infinite in knowledge, or omniscient, should 
know the smallest thing as well as the greatest; 
should take cognizance of the minutest animalcule 
in the drop of water, as of the most radiant arch¬ 
angel before the throne in the seventh heaven. 
Seest thou not, then, O child of God, what this means 
for thee, even for thee, in thy conscious humiliation 
and littleness, thy fears, thy distrust of the divine 
care, thy dread of what thou hast called the contin¬ 
gencies of life? We see in the light of this truth, not 
merely the exceeding comfort, but the philosophic 
and literal truthfulness of those passages of Script¬ 
ure which assure us that the little sparrow cannot 


A Text from Luther. 


i57 

fall to the earth without the notice of your Father; 
that the very “hairs of your heads are all num¬ 
bered” by him. They are numbered, not only on 
account of the graciousness of his nature, but of its 
necessity. You understand then why you, even 
you, though you may be the lowliest of all his 
children, may “ cast all your care upon the Lord,” 
because “ he careth for you,” even for you ; and, by 
reason of his very Godhead, cannot help caring for 
you. 

One of the grandest evidences of the Christian 
religion is this necessary correlation, this compat¬ 
ibility, of its teachings one with another, this im¬ 
plication and confirmation of its smallest truths, so 
called, by its greatest; this “ analogy of the faith,” 
as the old theologians call it. All those precious, 
minute truths about the heavenly Father’s care of 
the lowliest individual child of his ; of even the fall¬ 
ing sparrow ; his numbering the hairs of our heads ; 
his answer of individual prayer; his providence, 
erroneously called special providence, extending to 
our smallest interests—all are philosophically true 
and necessary, as corollaries of the Christian, and 
only rational, conception of the divine nature, as 
Absolute, as Infinite. The Christian metaphysics 
herein appear as the highest Christian ethics; and 
dogmatic theology becomes experimental, practi¬ 
cal theology. No penitent’s prayer can fail of his 
gracious notice; no good deed, however obscure, 


158 Christian Work and Consolation. 

can fail of his regard and compensation; no good, 
misunderstood, and suffering man can be misunder¬ 
stood of him, or fail of his vindication in the last 
day; no trial or grievance, of his feeblest child, can 
fail of his paternal sympathy and blessing. If the 
hairs of our heads are all numbered, what, then, of 
our repentant tears, our prayers, our good endeav¬ 
ors, our trials—are they not numbered ? And if we 
have such a God and Father, what shall we fear, in 
life, in death, in eternity ? “ If God be for us, who 

shall be against us ? ” 

How would you feel if you had, vested in your 
own person, omniscience, so as to know perfectly 
what is best for you; omnipotence, so as to be able 
to command whatsoever is thus desirable; omni¬ 
presence, so as to be always where any of your 
interests require you? Would you have one anx¬ 
ious thought again in this poor world ? Now, 
though you have not these powers, yet your God 
and Father has; and he has pledged them all for 
your safety and comfort. He has put them all at 
the command of your prayers. You are just as 
well off, then, as you could be did you wield them 
all yourself. Though you sometimes think that, 
had you his power, you would do otherwise for 
yourself than he seems to do ; yet, had you his 
wisdom as well, you would do precisely what he 
does for you ; you would see it to be best as he 
does. Believe this, and trust, and pray on. Com- 


A Text from Luther. 159 

mit your ways unto him, and he will direct your 
paths. In the darkest hour believe this, and walk 
quietly forward ; for remember that this is your 
pilgrimage, your probation. You need, as a re¬ 
claimed sinner, preparation for the ultimate bless¬ 
edness he has in reserve for you. Let him guide 
you in the preparation, though it be through fire or 
water. “ For our light affliction, which is but for a 
a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and 
eternal weight of glory.” 


160 Christian Work and Consolation. 


V. 


“BE OF GOOD COMFORT.” 

HE joy of the Lord shall be your strength,” 



-*■ says a prophet, and his words are not 
mere rhetoric; they convey a deep practical phi¬ 
losophy; for any thing, as we have said, can be 
done better with a cheerful spirit than with a de¬ 
spondent temper. This comfort is not merely a 
great consolation, the best that the soul can crave 
this side of heaven; it is a strong element of con¬ 
servative force in the soul. “ The peace of God,” 
says an apostle, “shall keep your hearts and minds.” 
There is great power in joy, but a steadier strength 
in peace—power or strength for practical work or 
struggle. Distrust or agitation never helps a diffi¬ 
cult undertaking, but often defeats it—sometimes 
renders it absolutely impracticable. 

You could hardly walk from one side of the street 
to the other on a plank a foot wide were it elevated 
a hundred feet in the air; but you could readily 
enough pass on it were it upon the ground. Why 
the difference ? In the latter case you have confi¬ 
dence, self-possession; in the other you have not, 
and life or death hangs on the difference. Thus 
the peace of God shall keep your hearts and minds, 


“ Be of Good Comfort.” 161 

by saving you from fear, from distrust, from agita¬ 
tion. Giving you quietness and assurance, it shall 
become a source of real, of invincible force within 
you. The onsetting foe, beholding it, will recoil 
before your steadiness ; your own blows against 
him will be more directly, more effectually, because 
more deliberately, given. Nothing on earth is 
stronger than the will guided by a peaceful con¬ 
science. 

An apostle has said, “ Rejoice in the Lord alway; 
and again I say, Rejoice ”—asserting not merely a 
Christian privilege, but a Christian duty. 

But is not a happy frame of mind very much a 
matter of temperament, of constitution ? It cer¬ 
tainly is; and blessed is the man, and thankful 
should he be, who is born with such a tempera¬ 
ment. He has an inner light which may gild all 
life. Hume, though far from being a religious man, 
records, in his “ Autobiography,” his thankfulness 
for a naturally cheerful mind. He lived in an al¬ 
most uniform serenity, and even died with at least 
indifference. It made his very style, and gave an 
indefinable charm to his writings, objectionable as 
they may be in other respects. Doddridge was a 
still better example of this genial temperament—an 
example sanctified by piety. Writing to a friend, 
he says: “ My days begin and pass and end in 
pleasure, and seem short because they are so de¬ 
lightful. I have more of the presence of God than 
11 


162 Christian Work and Consolation. 

I ever remember. He enables me to live for him, 
and to live with him. When I awake in the morn¬ 
ing I address myself to him and converse with him; 
and he meets me in my study, in secret and family 
devotions. It is pleasant to read, pleasant to com¬ 
pose, pleasant to converse with my friends at home, 
pleasant to visit the sick, the poor; pleasant to 
write letters of necessary business, by which any 
good may be done, and pleasant to preach the 
Gospel to poor souls; pleasant in the week to 
think how near another Sabbath is, and, O ! how 
much more pleasant to think how near eternity is, 
and that it is but a step from earth to heaven! ” 

We should endeavor to cultivate such a temper¬ 
ament ; for we can do so in spite of constitutional 
tendencies. It is the divinest prerogative of hu¬ 
man nature that it can, especially by the grace of 
God, undergo moral transformation. What is mor¬ 
al culture but moral change from bad to better? 
This is the sublime meaning of “ moral agency/’ of 
“free-will.” Man can rise, out of the deepest abyss 
of evil, to saintship here and angelhood hereafter. 
Many of the holiest and happiest saints in history 
were thus raised out of a sort of demonism. “There 
goes John Newton ! ” exclaimed the good pastor 
of Olney and friend of Cowper; “there goes John 
Newton, had it not been for the grace of God ” 
—as he saw a murderer pass on his way to exe¬ 
cution. 


“Be of Good Comfort.” 163 

We lay too much to our temperament—too much 
of our sins as well as our sufferings. If it is bad, or 
melancholic, it is not merely our cross to bear, but 
our enemy, to conquer, or at least to subdue. Many 
diseases are constitutional, or hereditary, but sci¬ 
ence teaches us that if forewarned in early life, and 
led to regulate our lives accordingly, we can avert 
their development, and, in the course of a few gen¬ 
erations, eliminate the hereditary evil. All the 
transmitted maladies in the world could thus be 
eradicated in the course of time, would mankind 
but heed that terrible yet most benevolent law 
called heredity. Let us thank God for science, 
which is his own revelation in nature, for such a 
lesson and such a hope, by which, combined with 
the Gospel, some coming age may restore the lost 
paradise of earth, as well as open wider the gates 
of the paradise above. 

The lesson, just here, then, is that, knowing our 
personal temperament, we should aim, as a chief 
point of Christian culture, to resist and correct its 
wrong tendencies. The despondent man should 
remember that Paul’s language is, as we have af¬ 
firmed, not merely the expression of a privilege, it 
is a command, and an emphatic one: “ Rejoice in 
the Lord alway; and again I say, Rejoice.” He 
should force himself to look away from the dark side 
of things; he should acquire the habit of thanksgiv¬ 
ing for his mercies, not the habit of lamenting over 


164 Christian Work and Consolation. 

his sorrows; he should associate with cheerful 
friends, read cheerful and avoid cynical books; 
he should insist upon his right to rejoice in the 
Lord, whatever failure of joy he may find in oth¬ 
er things—and of rejoicing in the Lord always. 
That is Paul’s fundamental idea—in the Lord, 
and in the Lord alway. For, “if God be for us, 
who shall be against us?” If heaven remain, how 
little need we care for the loss of earth, or any 
thing in it! 

One of the greatest facts of human nature is the 
power to form habits; and he that resolutely per¬ 
sists in forming the habit of a cheerful temper can, 
more or less, conquer any unhappy tendency of 
temperament. 

But do not the words of the apostle need some 
qualification? Some, doubtless. The good man 
must suffer in order to his moral discipline; but 
nothing need invade the inner sanctuary of Christian 
patience and peace. “ I take pleasure,” cries Paul, 
again, “ in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, 
in persecutions, in distresses for Christ’s sake; for 
when I am weak, then am I strong! ” Triumphant 
words, covering every possible case. 

Take the worst case, as we have said, or what is 
imagined by most men to be such. The “ last 
enemy,” says Paul, “ is death.” But how emphat¬ 
ically do the Scriptures teach triumph over it! “ O 
death, where is thy sting ? O grave, where is thy vie- 


“Be of Good Comfort/' 165 

tory? . . . Thanks be to God, which giveth us the 
victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Christ, says 
the Word, “ hath abolished death “ whosoever be- 
lieveth in me shall never die ”—wondrous words! 
figurative, yet full of meaning. Perhaps some one is 
reading these lines who knows that he is incurably 
sick and must soon die. For a man without faith 
such a condition would indeed be sad. But you, O 
servant of God, lift up your head, for your salvation 
draweth nigh! In presence of death, says Bacon, 
“ we are like children before masks—frightened, till 
we step behind them and find there is nothing 
there.” “ Death to a good man,” says Adam Clarke, 
“ is but passing through a dark entry, out of one 
little dusky room in his father’s house into another 
that is fair and large, lightsome and glorious, and 
divinely entertaining.” To the good man death is 
but a transition through brief languishing and sleep, 
to higher life. The soul, waking in the other 
world, but assumes its former on a higher plane. It 
bears with it, probably, its old, continuous conscious¬ 
ness, suspended for a moment and graduated with¬ 
out serious shock, to its new surroundings, as a 
happy traveler crosses the boundary line into a new 
country, with other landscapes, other inhabitants, 
better conditions in every respect, but all analogous 
to the old ones. The heavenly world margins on 
this, though it rises and extends away in everlast¬ 
ing and resplendent perspectives. 


166 Christian Work and Consolation. 

The classical nations dreamed of the Fortunate 
Isles, the Hesperides, beyond the Straits of Gibral¬ 
tar in the Atlantic; and none dreamed of them 
without wishing to be there. They were probably 
the Canaries, next to the Madeira Islands. Often 
we send our sick away to Madeira to save them, and 
some of them have to stay there habitually. What, 
now, if some beautiful island were discovered, in the 
distant seas, where all our sick could immediately 
regain health, and retain it perfectly if they continued 
there? How eagerly would we send them ! What, 
if golden gondolas, with silken sails, and conducted 
by men like angels—Bunyan’s “ shining ones ”— 
should come, at times, to our ports to bear benevo¬ 
lently away to the blissful isle our suffering ones ? 
Would we not carry them on board with thanksgiv¬ 
ings and benedictions? What if, when they lie 
down on the radiant deck, they should fall asleep not 
to wake up, nor know the change, till they reached 
the halcyon shore, and then arise to the joy of per¬ 
ennial health and perpetual youth? Would we not 
say to them, “ Go, hasten and be blessed? We will 
stay and prepare for the next voyage, and shall soon 
join you, never again to be parted ! ” And when they 
arrive there no incongruous changes shock them ; 
every thing is better, but every thing is compatible 
with their former life, a continuation of it, and anal¬ 
ogous to all their best habitudes. This is Christian 
death. Well exclaimed the apostle, “ Death is swal- 


“Be of Good Comfort.” 167 

lowed up in victory! ” This is the blessed fate to 
which we commit our dear dying ones in the Lord. 
This is that change which you, O ye of little faith, 
dread so much, but which, when you make the 
passage, will be but an entrance into the haven of 
eternal rest. Rejoice, then, in the Lord alway. 

We have seen what is the scriptural theory of af¬ 
fliction. “ Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, 
and scourgeth every son of his ”—a strong word. 
Those blessed ones whom John saw in heaven had 
gone up “ through great tribulation”—a still strong¬ 
er word, if possible. In the original it is a meta¬ 
phorical allusion to the reiterated blows of the flail 
in the thrashing of grain. Blow after blow may fall 
—there may seem to be no cessation, no relaxation, 
to the attacks; but “ in me ye shall have peace,” 
in all. “ Let not your heart be troubled.” Let 
us rather repeat, at such times, good Matthew 
Henry’s prayer: “Lord, when thy flails fall fast 
upon me, may I not, like the chaff, fly in thy face, 
but, like the grain, fall at thy feet.” “ We rejoice 
in tribulation,” says Paul—what remarkable words! 
What a theory of affliction ! It is one of the many 
distinctive peculiarities of the evangelical system ; 
and it lets down the very light of heaven upon the 
dark things of life. It reflects divine radiance 
upon every Christian sick-bed, every arena of Chris¬ 
tian combat and struggle, every Christian grave. 

“ Comfort yourselves with these words,” for they 


168 Christian Work and Consolation. 

are the words of your heavenly Father, who, in sub¬ 
jecting you to trials, often apparently mysterious, 
deigns thus far, at least, to give you a consolatory 
explanation of the mystery. 

These pages may be traced by some weary, weep¬ 
ing eyes. Accept, ye chastened of the Lord, our 
word from him to you; and, with the good monk, 
from whom we have so often quoted, end this reading 
with the prayer: “According to the greatness of 
thy goodness and multitude of thy mercies, look 
upon me, O Lord, and hear the prayer of thy serv¬ 
ant, who is far exiled from thee in the land of the 
shadow of death. Protect and keep the soul of me, 
the meanest of thy servants, amid so many dangers 
of this corruptible life, and, by thy grace accom¬ 
panying me, direct it along the way of peace to its 
home of everlasting brightness. Amen.” 


How to Suffer. 


169 


VI. 

HOW TO SUFFER. 

^\NE of the noblest proofs of character is to know 
how to suffer well. And suffering is so com¬ 
mon a fact of human life that its ministry, for good 
or ill, both to ourselves and all who witness our ex¬ 
ample under it, must be one of our greatest respon¬ 
sibilities. We have cited Milton’s saying that “ they 
also serve who only stand and waitmuch more 
those who, like the three Hebrews in the heated 
furnace, reveal with them the presence of the “ Son 
of God.” 

There are circumstances, we have affirmed, in 
which to endure, in an exemplary way, may be 
the most effective service. On the other hand, how 
many with even slight, vague, but chronic suffering, 
detract from their religion by habitual repining and 
impatience. How many seem to take a morbid sat¬ 
isfaction in inflicting their sufferings upon others by 
forever talking about them, and by uttering cynical 
views of life; as if such utterances against life were 
not equally against providence. Many a family is 
thus kept in continuous unhappiness; many a 
young and beautiful soul, the daily witness of such 
an example, loses its early freshness and bloom, 


170 Christian Work and Consolation. 

and forever after sees life only through a jaundiced 
vision. 

Dr. Arnold, of Rugby, himself one of the no¬ 
blest characters, relates a charming story of his 
saintly but suffering sister, who for twenty years 
lay in a sort of crib, unable even to change her 
posture unaided, but who grew there into a sort 
of angelic loveliness, and thus contributed more 
perhaps than any thing else, besides the grace of 
God, to the formation of her brother’s rare char¬ 
acter. “ I never,” he says, “ saw a more perfect 
instance of the spirit of power and love and of a 
sound mind. Intense love almost to the annihila¬ 
tion of selfishness, a daily martyrdom for twenty 
years, during which she adhered to her early 
formed resolution of never talking about herself: 
thoughtful about the very pins and ribbons of my 
wife’s dress, about the making of a doll’s cap for a 
child; but of herself, save as regarded her improv¬ 
ing of all goodness, wholly thoughtless ; enjoying 
every thing lovely, graceful, high-minded, whether 
in God’s works or man’s, with keenest relish; inher¬ 
iting the earth to the very fullness of the prom¬ 
ise ; and preserved, through the valley and shadow 
of death, from all fear and impatience, or from 
every cloud of impaired reason which might mar 
the beauty of Christ’s glorious work. May God 
grant that I might come but within one hundred 
degrees of her place in glory ! ” 


How to Suffer. 


171 

We can hardly wonder at the moral beauty of 
Arnold’s own soul after learning that for twenty 
years he witnessed such a ministry of Christian 
suffering. A certain writer eloquently comments 
on this example. How could he speak otherwise 
than eloquently of it ? “ Certainly,” he says, “ such 

a life was true and beautiful; but the radiance of 
such a life never cheered this world by chance. A 
sunny patience, a bright-hearted self-forgetfulness, 
a sweet and winning interest in the little things of 
family intercourse, the divine luster of a Christian 
peace, are not fortuitous weeds carelessly growing 
out of the life garden. It is the internal that 
makes the external. It is the force required in the 
atoms that shapes the pyramid. It is the beautiful 
soul within which forms the crystal of the beautiful 
life without. There are exquisite shells within the 
sea — the shell of the nautilus, many chambered, 
softly carved, pearl-adorned, glowing with impris¬ 
oned rainbows. There are ugly shells within the 
sea—rude, dirt-colored, unsightly clam-shells. The 
shells are as the fishes within them. To these is 
given the power of extracting out of the same sea 
the beauty and the grace, or the dullness and the 
rudeness.” 

Suffering seeks sympathy, but it is a wretched 
mistake to suppose that by habitually talking of 
ourselves and complaining of our lot we can secure 
the interest of others. This is the most effectual 


172 Christian Work and Consolation. 

way to repel it or tire it out. It betrays moral 
weakness, often a species of moral cowardice, which 
can never be grateful to noble minds. True men 
wish always to evade croakers. Noble souls always 
turn with tenderness and love toward brave and 
patient sufferers. Evil is not, indeed, good per se f 
but to good men God ever educes good out of evil. 
The pearl is said to be produced by a disease in 
the oyster, but it is formed in concealment. Great 
men are always modest about both their talents 
and their sufferings, but it is of the essential nature 
of all virtue to speak to the heart without speech. 
It has a mute but divine eloquence which con¬ 
strains the admiration and tears of good souls — 
admiration and tears which it is their delight to 
give as a thankful return for the precious lesson of 
patience and fortitude. 

Divine grace should enable us thus to turn evil 
into good. This, indeed, is its obvious design, but 
a design which can never be accomplished with a 
repining spirit. “ It is good for me that I have 
been afflicted! ” exclaims the psalmist. Were 
the question put to all good men in the world, 
Whence, upon the whole, have you derived not only 
the most good, but the best consolation of your 
life, from your adversities or your prosperities ? 
the answer would be, From the former. How few 
of us would be saved were our lives without any of 
the discipline of affliction ? How little would we 


How to Suffer. 


173 


know of many of the highest virtues—of patience, 
fortitude, courage, trust in God, pity for man— 
without having suffered? And how many sweet 
and sanctifying experiences of divine consolation 
would we have lost had we not passed through 
those trials which test our faith and God’s prom¬ 
ises ? 

It should be remarked, also, that not usually the 
most positive sufferings, but rather, as we have 
said, vague and comparatively slight ones, espe¬ 
cially if they are more or less chronic, are the oc¬ 
casions of a discontented temper, of talk about 
ourselves, and of the infliction of our sufferings on 
others. Maladies of this sort do, indeed, often be¬ 
come the worst kind to the sufferer; but, to a great 
extent, by his habit of thinking, of complaining, of 
talking about himself. It is especially so with what 
are called nervous sufferers. A physician of the 
London St. Bartholomew’s Hospital has published 
a declaration that, from his extensive professional 
experience, he is certain that the usual self-indul¬ 
gent habits of such patients are the chief evil of 
their malady; that the common prescription of rest, 
of idleness, is altogether fallacious ; that in nine 
cases out of ten they need more rather than less 
occupation; that medical men do not find the 
hard-working statesmen, the overtaxed bishops, the 
tireless philanthropists of the realm complaining of 
wakefulness and mental wretchedness. Plenty of 


174 Christian Work and Consolation. 

occupation, especially if properly varied, is found 
to be remarkably sanative. But particularly im¬ 
portant is it in such maladies not to get the 
chronic habit of complaining, of talking of one’s 
self, of seeking sympathy. Brave endurance, with 
the use of simple sanitary means, is the best medi¬ 
cine. No, there are still better remedies—Christian 
grace, and plenty of honest, useful work. 

In most such vague maladies the joys of faith 
and the preoccupation of the mind by Christian 
labor would be an effective mitigation if not a reme¬ 
dy. Another English medical authority says that 
“ Mental influences affect the system, and a joyous 
spirit not only relieves pain, but increases the mo¬ 
mentum of life in the body.” In the memoir of 
the saintly Henry Venn we read that a medical 
friend, Pearson of Clapham, frequently visited him 
in his sickness, and observed that the “ near pros¬ 
pect of dissolution so elated his mind with joy that 
it proved a stimulus to life. Upon one occasion 
Venn himself remarked some fatal appearances, ex¬ 
claiming, ‘ Surely these are good symptoms! ’ 
Pearson replied, ‘Sir, in this state of joyous ex¬ 
citement you cannot die.’ ” 

On the treatment of such sufferings there will, 
doubtless, be all kinds of opinions, with the suffer¬ 
ers themselves, at least; but on one point there 
can be no dispute, namely, that the purified soul 
should ever exemplify its diviner life in whatever 


How to Suffer. 


i 75 


afflictions; that the beautiful example of Arnold’s 
sister should be that of every Christian sufferer; 
that, as in the case of Paul’s thorn in the flesh, 
though the suffering may not be mitigated, the 
grace of God shall be sufficient for the one on 
whom the burden is laid. 


176 Christian Work and Consolation. 


VII. 

KNOWLEDGE AND HAPPINESS. 

O the comforts of piety let us not hesitate to 



-L add those of the natural life. We should 
distinguish well the patient endurance of affliction 
from the Manichean asceticism with which the de¬ 
cayed Church has disfigured Christianity. The 
natural life is God’s own gift, and should be en¬ 
joyed by his child. No one has a better right to 
its wholesome pleasures. Paul, in speaking even 
of wealth, says, “ God giveth us richly all things to 
enjoy.” The Gospel teaches the consecration, not 
the abnegation, of the natural life. To the devout 
soul the natural world is a revelation, a reflection 
of God, and has more than material charms. The 
pleasures of aesthetic culture—of natural beauty, of 
positive knowledge, of art, of literature—are legiti¬ 
mate next to holiness itself. 

A writer on Prescott, the blind American his¬ 
torian, says that, “with another learned author, 
who was totally blind, Augustine Thierry, who 
wrote ‘The Conquest of England by the Normans/ 
Prescott virtually declared, ‘ There is something in 
the world which is better than health itself; it is devo¬ 
tion to the pursuit of knowledge.’ ” This is a grand 


Knowledge and Happiness. 177 

and grateful truth—grateful not only to those who 
have not the enjoyment of health, but to all culti¬ 
vated men. 

We have remarked that writers on natural the¬ 
ology might find a special, perhaps we might say a 
supreme, argument, in the fact, that, by the very 
constitution of human nature, the grade of happi¬ 
ness depends upon the gradation of good things. 
For example, health fits a man best to enjoy the 
material world; intelligence, or the cultivation of 
his higher nature, lifts him to a higher plane 
of enjoyment in the intellectual world, where he 
may command a genuine felicity even with few 
material resources, or with but poor health it¬ 
self ; and, finally, virtue lifts him to the highest 
sphere, not only of improvement, but of happiness. 
For knowledge and virtue really have their own re¬ 
ward ; they are intrinsically felicitous. God has so 
constituted the human soul that this grateful fact 
is a fact, an indefeasible fact. And what stronger 
proof of beneficent design, of divinely gracious 
final causes, can our philosophy discover in the 
whole universe! So true is it in regard to virtue, 
that even the evils which sometimes attend good¬ 
ness must be considered as largely felicitous; he 
is a happy man, in his best susceptibility of happi¬ 
ness, who suffers for truth or righteousness. 

One of the invariable conditions of virtue is 
self-denial; but is not self-denial, in a good cause, 
12 


178 Christian Work and Consolation. 

one of the highest enjoyments? If it is self-denial 
of our personal, evil propensities/it becomes self¬ 
conquest, moral victory, with the ineffable exhilara¬ 
tion of victory. If it is self-denial for the good of 
others, the best sensibilities of the soul receive from 
it a recompense abundantly worth the self-interest 
sacrificed. God, we repeat, has made it so; and 
the fact is a proof, not only that there is a God, but 
a good God. 

The gradation of the argument (in natural the- 
ology) is symmetrical and beautiful. Health is the 
highest physical enjoyment, and health means obe¬ 
dience to God’s natural laws. Intelligence is higher 
enjoyment, and intelligence means conformity to 
God’s laws of the intellectual world. Virtue is the 
highest enjoyment, and virtue is obedience to God’s 
laws of the moral universe. Thus happiness is 
graded to the gradations of our being, from lower 
to higher. A designing and a benevolent mind 
could alone have thus constituted the world, and 
have thus adapted man to it. 

The truth here stated is, perhaps, least recognized 
in respect to knowledge. There are many devout 
men who consider it a very secondary thing. They 
forget the apostolic injunction, “Add to your faith 
... knowledge,” and the declaration of the prophet, 
“My people perish for lack of knowledge.” We 
could say much of the influence of intelligence on 
Christian character; but wish here to speak only on 


Knowledge and Happiness. 179 

the happiness which God himself has attached to 
knowledge. One thing can be affirmed on this sub¬ 
ject, without qualification, namely, that men who 
are best fitted to judge of it, men who have most 
cultivated knowledge, have most emphatically as¬ 
serted its value as a source of enjoyment. Biblio¬ 
maniacs are never pessimists. Doubtless there are 
some kinds of study which are a weariness to the 
flesh, if not to the soul. There are intellectual in¬ 
quiries which, if not morally unhealthy, are distress¬ 
ing to the baffled mind ; but the knowledge of God’s 
own works, whether in the material or immaterial 
world, can never be obnoxious to such an objection. 
The very labor of the acquisition of knowledge, 
when once formed into a habit, becomes felicitous. 
We have cited Lessing’s remark, that if the Creator 
should offer him the alternatives of acquiring knowl¬ 
edge immediately, by intuition, or by the usual la¬ 
borious research, he would thankfully choose the 
latter; and Montesquieu’s, that there was no chagrin 
of life which he could not get rid of in his library; 
and Gibbon’s, that if all the treasures and scepters 
of the East were offered him as a substitute for his 
books, he would choose the latter. Macaulay, in 
a time of severe domestic affliction, said: “That I 
have not sank under this blow I owe chiefly to lit¬ 
erature. What a blessing it is to love books as I 
love them ; to be able to converse with the dead, 
and live among the unreal! Literature has saved 


i8o Christian Work and Consolation. 

my life and my reason. I am more than half re¬ 
solved to abandon politics and give myself wholly 
to letters.” There are, indeed, greater comforts for 
the afflicted than books; the devout man knows 
that quite well; but how much better is his lot if he 
is both devout and intelligent ? Why should he not 
claim the double happiness of which he is thus 
capable ? 

Macaulay gives us, in one of his brilliant essays, 
a charming picture of the “ friendship ” of books. 
“ This friendship,” he says, “ is exposed to no dan¬ 
ger from occurrences by which other attachments 
are weakened or dissolved. Time glides on; for¬ 
tune is inconsistent; tempers are soured; bonds, 
which seemed indissoluble, are daily sundered by 
interest, by emulation, or by caprice; but no such 
cause can affect the silent converse which we hold 
with the highest of human intellects. The placid in¬ 
tercourse is disturbed by no jealousies or resentments. 
These are the old friends who are never seen with 
new faces; who are the same in wealth and in pov¬ 
erty, in glory and in obscurity. With the dead 
there is no rivalry; in the dead there is no change. 
Plato is never sullen ; Cervantes is never petulant; 
Demosthenes never comes unseasonably; Dante 
never stays too long; no difference of political opin¬ 
ions can ever alienate Cicero ; no heresy can excite 
the horror of Bossuet.” 

There are some inferences from the doctrine of 


Knowledge and Happiness. 181 

the immortality of the soul which claim the consid¬ 
eration of all thoughtful minds. Apart from its 
theological and ethical bearings, it implies remark¬ 
able psychological consequences. One of these is 
the prospect of intellectual growth which it affords. 
There are some characteristic facts, in the consti¬ 
tution, or laws, of the mind, which apply to the 
subject, and to each one of us personally. Let us 
notice a few of them. 

First: The indefinite—we were about to say the in¬ 
finite—capacity of the soul for knowledge, for growth. 
We can conceive of no limit to its power in this re¬ 
spect. Were an angel, or a saint in heaven, to be 
arrested at any given point in his progress, and as¬ 
sured that he must pause and stagnate there forever, 
he would sink into despair; for such a fate would 
be contrary to the very laws and instincts of mental 
life. Mental activity implies mental progress ; ar¬ 
rest of mental activity must be arrest of mental 
life. The apparent decay of the intellectual facul¬ 
ties, by disease or old age, is traceable to the ma¬ 
terial organization, but not to any inherent law of 
the mind. While there are many instances of 
this decay, there are also many exceptions; and a 
single exception would be a demonstration. But, 
on this point, more directly. An arrest of men¬ 
tal activity, then, as implied by arrest of mental 
progress, is inconceivable. We must attribute to 
the mind an essential attribute of matter, if we 


182 Christian Work and Consolation. 

admit such an arrest. But if the soul of man 
has this capacity for illimitable growth, then, 
with eternity in which to develop it, what a 
prospect of intellectual enlargement and grandeur 
is before him! How sublime, how divine, the re¬ 
ligion which has brought “ life and immortality to 
light!” The soul, of course, is not infinite; God 
alone is thus the Absolute; but there is one re¬ 
spect, as we have shown, in which it may be said 
that he has endowed his intellectual creation with 
his own infinity. He has given it infinite duration ; 
and the scriptural theory of the blessedness of re¬ 
deemed souls is summarily this, namely, that with 
faculties for ever-growing intelligence and happi¬ 
ness, there shall be a corresponding limitless dura¬ 
tion for their development; with indefinite capabil¬ 
ity, there shall be an infinite sphere of activity. 
Never becoming infinite, the soul shall be ever 
expanding toward the infinite; for it shall have an 
eternity in which to grow thus. The doctrine of 
the immortality of the soul is then correlative to 
its constitutional indefinite capability of growth—a 
strong argument for the truth of Christianity, which 
alone has clearly stated the doctrine, and is, in fact, 
based upon it. 

Second, the indestructibility of thought, of mem¬ 
ory, is another of these characteristic facts. Even 
matter itself is acknowledged to be indestructible, 
except by a miracle. What we call destructibility, 


Knowledge and Happiness. 183 

in respect to matter, means only its divisibility; 
and divisibility is an essential attribute of mat¬ 
ter; it belongs not to mind. Many strange facts 
show the indestructibility of thought. Dr. Rush, 
who may be called the founder of the American 
medical faculty, records some of them in his “ Es¬ 
say on the Mind.” He says that the old German 
and Swedish settlers of Pennsylvania, who were 
taken to America in their childhood, and had lost 
their native language, often used it in their last 
hours — the excitation of the brain, in abnormal 
conditions, thus enabling them to remember not 
only sentences, but words, syllables, even individ¬ 
ual letters or their sounds. These had been for¬ 
gotten for twenty-five or fifty years, but their 
memory was not destroyed, it was only latent; it 
was indestructible. He mentions the case of a 
man who had put away a will, and for years 
had forgotten where it was deposited; when it was 
needed no search could discover it, no effort. of 
memory recall its place, but in a dream he saw it 
in a barrel, filled with paper refuse, in his attic. 
The next day it was found there. Such facts 
would be called by some good people providential 
revelations, and such they may be in some cases; 
but if even so, they are brought about by means, 
and the means in this instance was the ever-abid¬ 
ing, though dormant, memory, revived abnormally 
in the anxious mind of the dreamer. Coleridge re- 


184 Christian Work and Consolation. 

cords an example which has interested all psychol¬ 
ogists. An illiterate German servant-maid was 
heard to repeat, in the excitement of fever, pas¬ 
sages from the most erudite works of the Rab¬ 
bins, and other Oriental scholars, in Hebrew and 
Chaldaic. It was an unaccountable mystery, and 
led to an inquiry into her antecedents, when it was 
found that she had years before been at service in 
the family of an old German scholar, who was in 
the habit of reading his learned books while walk¬ 
ing on his piazza, through the open windows of 
which the untutored girl had heard his unintelli¬ 
gible articulations, and she had faithfully remem¬ 
bered them, though they were to her but senseless 
sounds. Drowning persons, who, after losing con¬ 
sciousness, have been restored, report that the mi¬ 
nutest events of all their past lives were pictured 
vividly in the memory, in the last efforts of con¬ 
sciousness, and this experience seems to be invari¬ 
able in drowning. Thus, then, from the very 
nature of the mind, and the facts of its experience, 
thought would seem to be indestructible. The loss 
of memory is but a temporary obscuration, arising 
from physical conditions, and relieved by new phys¬ 
ical conditions, or by exemption from all such con¬ 
ditions. 

Again, the faculty or law of generalization not 
only serves to advance knowledge, but to simplify 
it; it also leads to the grand and beautiful fact 


Knowledge and Happiness. 185 

that the more we know the more we can know. 
This is a precept of the Baconian Philosophy, 
and Paul, as we shall show, saw it before Ba¬ 
con. Induction of facts leading to principles, and 
deduction from principles leading to generaliza¬ 
tions, to laws; this is the whole process of Ba- 
conism; this is the process by which we make 
“ sciences.” Now by this process the details of 
knowledge are at last dropped for their generalized 
significance, so that your child in the public school 
may to-day know more of astronomy than Ptolemy 
or even Newton, more of botany than Linnaeus—not 
have as great a mind, but really have more knowl¬ 
edge or truth. The details are not lost; their in¬ 
trinsic significance is kept, and is blended in the 
generalization; but no student of mineralogy need 
study every stone, as the founders of the science 
did; he studies only their generalizations, their 
science, and thus knows all they knew, and does 
so with infinitely less labor than they had to per¬ 
form. 

It is by this fact of the intellectual world 
that we explain Paul’s notable passage in 1 Cor. 
xiii, 8-12, an anticipation of Baconian generaliza¬ 
tion. At first view Paul would seem to depreciate 
knowledge—“ it shall vanish away ; ” but he shows 
how it shall “vanish:” by being absorbed in the 
higher, generalized knowledge. He first knew “ as 
a child,” then as “ a man,” knowing only “ in part 


186 Christian Work and Consolation. 

but at last shall know “even as he is known”—on 
a scale in which all previous knowledge shall seem 
to have “ vanished away,” being absorbed in the 
higher generalizations, as the letters of the alpha¬ 
bet seem to be unnoticed by a practiced reader, 
glancing over an eloquent page, though every let¬ 
ter, every dot of punctuation, is really perceived, 
and passes through the eye and the brain. 

Put these four facts together: Indefinite mental 
capability ; the indestructibility of thought; gener¬ 
alization, ever simplifying knowledge, that is to 
say, truth ; and eternity, for its acquisition ; and 
what an uncomprehended destiny awaits the hu¬ 
man being, considered only as an intellect! The 
archangel, standing to-day on the highest acclivity 
of knowledge yet reached by created mind, will, 
indeed, go on forever, and you may never excel 
them, but where they stand to-day you may stand 
in some era of eternity. Such, then, is the soul in¬ 
tellectually considered alone. What shall it profit a 
man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose such 
a soul ? It is with such thoughts that we can under¬ 
stand the inestimable value of the soul, as affirmed 
by holy Scripture, the intervention of Christ for it, 
and the interest of angels, who rejoice in the heav¬ 
ens over its salvation. 

Such is the prospective glory of knowledge, much 
as it may be below the prospect of moral growth 
and sentient happiness implied by immortality. 


Knowledge and Happiness. 187 

“ Add to your faith,” says an apostle, “ virtue ; and 
to virtue, knowledge.” Solomon prayed for wis¬ 
dom and knowledge. “ Wise men lay up knowl¬ 
edge.” “ Every prudent man dealeth with knowl¬ 
edge. “ That the soul should be without knowl¬ 
edge is not good.” “ My people are destroyed for 
lack of knowledge.” “ The priest’s lips should keep 
knowledge.” In Christ “ are hid all the treasures 
of wisdom and knowledge.” 

Finally, let us add, that literature, while one of 
the greatest, is also one of the most attainable, en¬ 
joyments. There is hardly any poor household 
that cannot have its library, containing such knowl¬ 
edge as kings could not command before the art 
of printing. What a providential provision is this ! 
A comparatively small sum, saved from your use¬ 
less luxuries, would be sufficient to procure nearly 
all the variety of works needed for this rich domes¬ 
tic comfort. How many happy evenings could you 
have with a few of them at your winter fireside! 
How many hours of sadness could be thus sustained 
and transmuted into seasons of consolation ! How 
medicinal would they be to the mind, and even 
to the body in wearisome days on the sick-bed! 
What an entertainment to failing old age! What 
a genial and salutary source of impressions to 
childhood! The time, we think, will come when, 
in every well-ordered family, the domestic library 
will be esteemed one of the most indispensable, 


188 Christian Work and Consolation. 

most befitting articles of furniture—the nourish¬ 
ment of the mind no less important than the 
nourishment of the body; when piety shall be re¬ 
enforced by intelligence, and intelligence shall be 
beautified by piety. Then 

“ mind and soul, according well, 

Shall make one music, as before, 

But vaster.” 

Then shall we begin to approach to the similitude 
of Him in whose likeness we are to awake after 
this experience of mortality. 


How much We have to Die for. 189 


VIII. 


the end—how much we have to die for. 

<c '\/’OU have so much to live for,” was said to 
a dying disciple, who was surrounded with 
every convenience and refinement of life. “ But I 
have so much to die for!” was the reply of the 
sufferer. 

It was a befitting reply. How can there be any 
other from the thoughtful child of God, before 
whose faith the everlasting city is looming in ra¬ 
diant vision ? 

Was not this the habitual consciousness of the 
primitive saints? Paul said he desired to depart 
and be with Christ. He represents the Christians 
of his day as suffering, as groaning, being bur¬ 
dened with their mortal life, and desiring to be 
relieved of it; not as if they would be unclothed, 
but clothed upon with immortal life. They were 
patiently to endure it, as seeing Him who is in¬ 
visible; but they longed for the glorious appear¬ 
ing of their Lord. And the prospect of the celes¬ 
tial city was not, with them, a vague hope. “ We 
know,” Paul says, speaking of them all, “that, if 
our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, 
we have a building of God, a house not made with 


190 Christian Work and Consolation. 

hands, eternal in the heavens.” How strangely 
falls this language upon the ear of a classical scholar, 
who turns away from the best pages of the Greek 
philosophy, on the future of the human soul, to 
Paul’s exposition of the supernatural! 

Is it possible to bear habitually along with us, 
from day to day, this consolatory consciousness 
of the apostolic Church?—to have thus our con¬ 
versation already in heaven, while struggling 
through the trials of our pilgrimage ? It is. 
And yet let us speak considerately on the sub¬ 
ject ; it is not a theme for rhapsody though it 
be one for rapture. Indisputably there is special 
grace for our special conditions. There is grace 
to die with, as well as grace to live with; and 
we are not to expect God to impart his grace 
to us superfluously, or at unsuitable times. Still, 
if* we need not dying grace now, we certainly 
need grace to save us from the fear of death. 
Christ came to deliver those who through fear of 
death were all their life-time subject to bondage. 
None of his saints are required to endure this 
moral slavery. And do we not read of a perfect 
love which casteth out fear? Fear hath torment, 
but what have those to do with torment whose sins, 
however dark their dye, have been washed out by 
Him whose “blood cleanseth from all sin?” They 
may, indeed, sing, though with eyes wet with peni¬ 
tential tears, “O Death, where is thy sting? O 


How much We have to Die for. 191 

Grave, where is thy victory? . . . Thanks be to 
God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord 
Jesus Christ.” 

Again, indisputably, the primitive saints lived in 
a sort of death, or peril of death, which required 
special grace; and they were abundantly supplied 
with it. To be a Christian, in those early times, 
was to invite martyrdom. They could not count 
their lives dear unto them, for they were treated as 
the offscouring of the earth; and in the great perse¬ 
cutions through continued generations we number 
the blessed martyrs by thousands and tens of thou¬ 
sands. For these successive generations the daily 
grace needed by the Church was a dying grace. 
They confronted death so much, they became so 
familiar with it, and with the triumph of their mar¬ 
tyred brethren over it, that they came at last to be 
joyfully defiant of it. And what forms of death 
had they to confront! Our imaginations shrink 
from the old records of them; but the saintly 
eyes of men, women, and children quailed not 
before them. They saw them transformed with 
glory. They saw, above the Coliseum, visions 
of waiting angels and waving palm-branches, and 
heard the harmonies of the everlasting songs. 
We doubt not that it was comparatively easy for 
them to die even such appalling deaths as they 
were subjected to; for the whole Church was per¬ 
vaded by a heroic, a divine enthusiasm for martyr- 


192 Christian Work and Consolation. 

dom. Their leaders had to restrain them from rush¬ 
ing upon death. Their Lord had died for them, 
and they were ready and waiting to die for Him 
and for one another. It was a peculiar, a wonderful 
age! As they were continually near martyrdom, 
they were continually near heaven, and longed to 
enter in. To their spiritual vision the gate of 
heaven seemed so near the gate of the Church, 
that the passage from one to the other was but a 
step. The heavenly Jerusalem had descended from 
heaven, and was one, in a sense, with the Church. 
It is hardly possible for us to imagine the full effect 
of such circumstances on the minds of fervently de¬ 
vout men who valued life chiefly as a means of 
saving others, their very persecutors, and who thus 
shared in the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings for 
the lost world. 

How contrasted our condition with theirs! Our 
needed grace is not such as overcomes the in¬ 
stinct of life, of self-preservation, which is doubtless 
a law of nature, and which, while enabling us to 
suffer much that is in life, also enables us to live on 
in comfortable and blessed usefulness to our fellow- 
creatures ; but still the grace we need is such as can 
save us meanwhile from the fear of death. This is 
one of the liabilities of our condition, and the 
grace of God is given for all our liabilities. If we 
live not in habitual exposure to martyrdom, we do, 
nevertheless, live in habitual exposure to death. 


193 


How much We have to Die for. 

Our Christian consciousness should, therefore, ever 
cheerfully recognize this fact, and on each day of 
our pilgrimage over the desert of life, we should be 
ready to strike our tent and hasten away beyond 
the horizon. The night may still linger at the point 
where we are, in the desert, but could we hasten 
beyond, we should see the day rising with gladness 
and glory. 

The Christian theory of human life, namely, that 
it is probationary, is confirmed by death—one of 
the most universal of natural facts—if we may call 
it such. Death is the most certain correlative 
of life—as universal a fact as birth. The Stoics 
taught that the best remedy for the fear of death is 
familiarity with it by frequent meditation on it« 
We may well doubt the efficacy of such a remedy, 
unless the meditation include something more than 
death itself. To the Christian the Stoic prescrip¬ 
tion may be relevant, for his meditation of the 
subject may be in the light of immortality and 
eternal life. Revelation circles the dying head of 
the good man with a divine halo; but what comfort 
can there be in the contemplation of death per se ? 

One of the best confutations of infidelity is that 
death is the consummate failure of life, and of all 
things pertaining to life. It has, therefore, from the 
skeptical stand-point, no analogy with human life; 
no compatibility with any of the motives, the aspira¬ 
tions, or aims, that are essential to, and that ennoble 
13 


194 Christian Work and Consolation. 

human life. And such a lack of compatibility is 
contrary to all the rest of human history on earth, 
and to all the natural world; it is contrary to what 
is called “ the nature of things.” Such a view of 
death is refuted by every worthy, every just view 
of life. Has nature committed a blunder in this 
case, and such a blunder, too, as exists nowhere else 
in all her scheme? 

To the reflecting man there is, even apart from 
any religious prepossessions, a very solemn, and, 
without Christian faith, a tragically sublime, in¬ 
terest in death, viewed simply in its general aspect 
—the procession of humanity over and off this plan¬ 
et into the mysterious unknown. What a procession 
of the generations it is! How solemn, and yet 
how majestic, how inevitable, that march! For no 
one—monarch or slave, sage or dolt — can evade 
this stern conscription; all must move forward, 
to the tolling bell of time, into the invisible future. 
Can any thoughtful man repress the cry, Whither? 

How striking the spectacle is when we view 
it in books of history! On one page we become 
interested, dazzled, by the rife and * splendid life 
of an epoch — of the court of the Stuarts, in 
Macaulay, or that of the Grand Monarque, in 
Voltaire. We turn the pages, and one after 
another of the prominent personages disappears, 
dies. We reach a point at last where all have given 
way to new characters and a new epoch. Princes, 


How much We have to Die for 195 

and courtiers, and plebeians; the great statesmen, 
the great captains, the gay court beauties, all have 
fretted through their careers of rivalry, of luxury, 
of sin, and sleep forever in silence. How long the 
period seemed in prospect! How short it seems in 
retrospect ! However resounding the names or 
deeds of any of them were in their day, not one 
of them will ever rise again to make a sign to the 
human race. We pass on through the history of 
another generation, and the curtain again falls, 
shutting forever from view its last historic actor. 

What does it mean, this stupendous fact of the 
living, dying world! We ask not, What does it 
mean to the Christian thinker? To him, with his 
doctrine of a future life, and the consequent proba¬ 
tionary nature of the present life, its lesson is intel¬ 
ligible enough, and full of poetry and of logic ; but 
what does it, what can it mean, to the thoughtful, 
candid infidel, if any such there be? 

There are some inferior creatures which far sur¬ 
pass man in the duration of life. There are ele¬ 
phants, treading the plains of Hindustan to-day, 
within whose life-time all the sovereigns, the cap¬ 
tains, the sages, the toilers, who were on the earth 
at their birth have passed away. There are owls, 
tortoises, toads, mere reptiles, which outlive genera¬ 
tions of men. Man, to whom all are, in the scheme 
of nature, subordinate, hastens through the disci¬ 
pline of life, inevitably growing better or worse by 


196 Christian Work and Consolation. 

it—hastens out of the visible arena into the higher 
or lower sphere for which he has prepared himself. 
Do we ask again, What is the meaning of it? Is it 
not obvious, O reflecting man? Would not all life, 
and all the system of the world, end in an astonish¬ 
ing solecism were it not for the Christian doctrine 
of probation ?— end, we say, for it would be a sole¬ 
cism without precedent in life itself. Every other 
link in its chain but the last is logically and benefi¬ 
cently correlated. Can, then, the last, the golden 
link, hang on nothing? Can any thing hang on 
nothing? 

There is one point of view from which this tran¬ 
sition of humanity, generation after generation, 
over the planet and into eternity, appears as a be¬ 
neficent law. Without death the world would, in 
fewer generations than we perhaps imagine, be so 
densely peopled that all increase of human life 
would be impossible. By death, therefore, there is 
made possible an infinitely greater amount of indi¬ 
vidual life—an infinitely larger number of candi¬ 
dates for immortality and eternal life. If man 
could not have died without sin, it is probable 
that he nevertheless would have passed to higher 
worlds, translated, like Enoch, generation after gen¬ 
eration. But still the evangelic doctrine of proba¬ 
tion recurs; it applies to every possible hypothesis 
of life, and without it life is inexplicable. 

What, then, O man of God, is the ultimate of 


How much We have to Die for. igy 

this high argument? What but that life is val¬ 
uable only in its relation to eternity; that disci¬ 
pline and duty are its greatest interests here; that 
affliction, however grievous to thy short-sighted 
vision, is but a transient cloud, and will pass away, 
leaving the eternal sun shining above and before 
thee ? 

“ Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord.” 
Yes, death is blessed to the child of God, however 
his imperfect fancy may picture it as dreadful. 
Paul desired it, because it is the true beginning 
of life—the everlasting life—to purified souls. The 
embryonic human being has life—but not its ap¬ 
pointed life; it must be born into what is, to it, a 
new world before it can have its completed life; 
and it is quite probable that the redeemed soul, in 
emerging from its material into its immaterial state, 
passes through a similar revolution, perhaps a great¬ 
er ; but still, as we have said, with the old continu¬ 
ous consciousness briefly suspended as in sleep. 
One of the reasons why the Scriptures are so reti¬ 
cent about the future state may be, that its marvel¬ 
ous conditions and felicities are such as would cre¬ 
ate an excess of splendor; the vision might dazzle 
us into blindness. One thing we may be sure of: 
that the very infinitude of God’s power and wisdom 
and love will be put forth in the beatitude of his 
saints, when he has brought them through their pre¬ 
paratory discipline of action and endurance. No 


198 Christian Work and Consolation. 

wonder, then, that Paul, who was caught up into 
the heavens, and had a glimpse of their glories, 
saw things unutterable, and ever afterward desired 
to depart and be with Christ. Gird up, then, thy 
remaining strength, O child of God, and fear 
not. Thy Redeemer has swept, in his full tri¬ 
umph, through the gates of death, followed not 
only by legions of angels, but — blessed thought 
for repentant sinners!—by the pardoned thief who 
died by his side on the cross, the first trophy of 
his finished redemption. He has left the whole 
way full of the shining of his glory. Why, then, 
should we fear to tread it with our pilgrim feet, 
weary of the long probation on earth ? Let us 
make final and complete consecration of all things 
unto him, and then both lay us down in peace, 
and sleep, or die, without one care about the 
morrow — one anxious care. Cannot God, who 
takes care of the sparrow and of the archangel, 
take care of us ? Why should we be so eager to 
supplement his care by our own poor anxieties? 
Faith must take the place of care with us; this 
is all he requires—and how gracious is his req¬ 
uisition ! 

Again : Remind thyself that most of the occa¬ 
sions of thy fear are but fancies, which have no 
reality whatever, and, therefore, will not affect thee 
in the dreaded process of thy change. Many have 
feared death chiefly on account of its supposed 


How much We have to Die for. 199 

physical pains; but this apprehension is contrary to 
the best evidence we have on the subject. Medical 
writers have found good reason to doubt whether 
the final dissolution is attended with any real suf¬ 
fering. More than this, they adduce strong evidence 
going to prove that it is even an agreeable experi¬ 
ence. Brodie, one of the best authorities, wrote in 
detail on the subject, and reached the latter conclu¬ 
sion. He witnessed hundreds of deaths, and says 
there were but two or three that did not seem to 
confirm his opinion. The most reliable experience 
of death, which can come under scientific cogni¬ 
zance, is that of drowning, in which, after the last 
consciousness possible in the process has been lost, 
resuscitation has been artificially effected; and there 
is one invariable testimony in such cases, namely, 
that the whole process is one of exquisite enjoy¬ 
ment. The famous surgeon, Hunter, was not a 
devout man, but on his death-bed he declared 
himself unable to describe to his medical friends 
the wonderful bliss of dying—of the mere phys¬ 
ical sensations of the change. They would seem 
to be like that delicious sense of languor and rest 
which attends the coming of sleep. The ap¬ 
parent symptoms of convulsive distress, in some 
instances, are scientifically reconcilable with this 
view of the question. They are automatic. We 
know that they are often so in affections not unto 
death. The supposed sufferer comes out of them 


200 Christian Work and Consolation. 

with no consciousness, no recollection of them. 
Montaigne records his own experience on the sub¬ 
ject ; his apparent sufferings, his spasms, were so 
marked that his attendants were clamorous with 
their sympathies; his first consciousness was indi¬ 
cated by his remonstrance to them : “ Why will you 
disturb my sweet dream ! ” 

Again: How often the merely fictitious associa¬ 
tions of the grave dismay us—its silence, its soli¬ 
tude, its corruption, the funereal ceremonies where¬ 
with the dead are borne to it! But what are 
these associations? Only illusions—poetical fan¬ 
cies. You would not have them if a wax statue 
were clothed with your cast-off raiment and sub¬ 
jected to like observances. And what is your 
wasted body, after the soul’s escape, but your cast¬ 
off garment? Let it be laid away in the tomb 
as you would allow your old apparel to be put 
away anywhere. 

There is, then, but one ground of concernment 
about your expected change, and that is, the moral 
condition of the soul. But beware how your faith 
may fail just at this point. You are justified by 
faith; you must also enter into rest by faith. 
Christ must be all in all, here, as every-where else, 
in your moral history. Have you special remem¬ 
brances of sins, grievous sins ? Bring them, in con¬ 
trite confession, to his feet, and remember that con¬ 
solatory text: “ If we confess our sins, he is faithful 


How much We have to Die for. 201 

and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us 
from all unrighteousness.” This is God’s plan, and 
it is the only one that can meet the needs of any, 
even of the most saintly soul. To live, then, is 
Christ, but to die is gain. “ Whether living or dy¬ 
ing, we are the Lord’s.” 

The end, final safety, is the point of solicitude 
with the devout soul. In a Kempis’ Imitatione 
Christi is a passage which has been supposed to be 
an allusion to himself, and which, though very sim¬ 
ple, is very significant. “ When one,” he says, 
“ who was in anxiety of mind, often wavering be¬ 
tween hope and fear, did once, being oppressed with 
grief, humbly prostrate himself in a church, before 
an altar, in prayer, and said within himself, 1 O if I 
knew that I should yet persevere,’ he presently 
heard within him an answer from God, which said, 

1 What if thou didst know it, what wouldst thou do ? 
Do now what thou wouldst do then, and thou shalt 
be secure.’ And being herewith comforted and 
strengthened, he committed himself wholly to the 
will of God ; and that noisome anxiety ceased. Nei¬ 
ther had he any mind to search curiously any further 
to know what should befall him ; but rather labored 
to understand what was the perfect and acceptable 
will of God, for the beginning and accomplishing of 
every good work.” 

There is a precious, a very consolatory, lesson of 
experimental theology in this personal testimony of 


202 Christian Work and Consolation. 


the saintly monk of Mount St. Agnes, sent down to 
us through more than four hundred years. 

It would seem that there could be no more com¬ 
plete blessedness on earth than an absolute, an un¬ 
questionable assurance of one’s final salvation. To 
know for a certainty that we shall finally enter heav¬ 
en, and for ever and ever exult in its felicity—what 
would we not give, what would we not do, for such 
an inexpressible blessedness? How light would our 
heaviest trials become under such an assurance ? 
How easy our severest duties of self-denial and 
labor! If this assurance were communicated to us, 
in some incontestable manner, say by a voice from 
heaven, as at the baptism of Christ; or by a visioned 
angel, as in the annunciation to the Virgin; would 
not the happy consciousness thrill the heart to its 
inmost fiber? Could we ever afterward be the same 
beings we had been before? Would not all life, 
all the world, be transformed to us? Would we 
not go on our pilgrim way as walking in an ec¬ 
stasy? Would we not, like Paul, eagerly desire 
death itself that we might enter into our certain 
and ineffable bliss ? 

Yes, assuredly, child of God, there is no affliction 
which may be now bowing thee to the dust, which 
may be about to bow thee down through the re¬ 
mainder of life, that would not be transmuted into 
great joy, were an indisputable revelation to make 
it certain to thee that thou shalt, unfailingly, reach 


How much We have to Die for. 203 

the everlasting gates and tread the golden streets 
forever, crowned and triumphant! 

Preacher of the word, how wouldst thou preach 
if certain of this divine and infallible election > 
Thou wouldst become an apostle, shaking the very 
gates of hell! What would excess of labor, what 
would failing health, what would beggarly salary, 
be to thee ? Thou wouldst tread down the world 
beneath thy feet; thou wouldst covet martyrdom ; 
thou wouldst know no higher ambition than that of 
Paul, to finish thy course, and to mount, were it 
even in the flames at the stake, to thy certain rest. 

Suffering one, languishing in pain or weariness, 
through weary days and watchful nights, ap¬ 
pointed thereto as your test of discipleship, in 
lessons of patience, resignation, and hope, how 
resplendent would those days become, and how 
serene those nights, if you were infallibly certain 
that all your trials were about to issue in eternal 
blessedness! As surely as your Redeemer liveth, 
it shall be so if you, yourself, will it. Press to 
your heart the blessed assurance; make thus your 
sufferings a ministry to all about you; fear noth¬ 
ing, and at last die confident in your Lord—a 
witness for him to the latest moment—and thus 
fulfill the ministry committed to you of sancti¬ 
fied endurance. The Captain of your salvation 
was made perfect through suffering. There is, 
perhaps, nothing in which the power and triumph 


204 Christian Work and Consolation. 

of true religion is more demonstratively attested, 
before the world, than in the affectionate endur¬ 
ance of affliction. This is your appointment, your 
ministerial commission. Be faithful in it to the end, 
in healthfulness, in serenity, in sweetness of soul. 
Rejoice in tribulation, and make all about you 
acknowledge that the grace of God hath wrought 
mightily with you in your sorrows. The living will 
lay your example to heart; and in dying they will 
learn from you how to overcome all things. 

But then, as a Kempis admits, there is contingen¬ 
cy about our final safety. The doctrine of the sov- 
ereign grace of God is very full of comfort to some 
minds, in respect to this point, but the metaphysics 
of the doctrine are equally perplexing to other 
minds; yet, apart from this consideration, the con¬ 
tingency of our final salvation is subjected, as we 
have said, to our own volition. God willeth not 
the death of the sinner. He waiteth to be gra¬ 
cious. He is more solicitous to saye us than we are 
to be saved. He pitieth us as a father pitieth his 
child. But in his infinite wisdom he has made our 
whole probation contingent. Contingency is essen¬ 
tial to the idea of probation. He has wisely left 
our final fate conditional on our fidelity to him. 
And do we not see the wisdom of this fact? 

But, though this contingency hangs over all our 
probation, we can make the final issue of life cer¬ 
tain. “ Do now what thou wouldst do then, and 


How much We have to Die for. 205 

thou shalt be secure,” says a Kempis. If thou art 
certain of final salvation on certain conditions, lay 
hold on the conditions, and thou shalt thereby lay 
hold, as Paul says, on eternal life. 

The whole question comes, then, to this : The 
contingency of your final salvation inheres really 
in the contingency of its present conditions or 
means; but as the latter contingency is entirely 
subject to your volitional control, you may make, 
by the grace of God, positive, certain calculations 
of getting safely into heaven. Rejoice, then, in 
this fact. Take home to your heart the full as¬ 
surance of faith. Consecrate to God all property, 
all talents, all life — and while you maintain by 
faith the consecration, neither death, nor life, nor 
angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things 
present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, 
nor any other creature, shall be able to separate you 
from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our 
Lord. 

You may have much to live for, but O how 
much more have you to die for! Perhaps already 
your best ties of life have been transferred across 
the river, and await you there. There are your 
God and Saviour; there the saints and angels; 
there the reign of everlasting love and peace; 
there God’s hand shall wipe tears from all eyes; 
there the wicked cease from troubling; there the 
weary are at rest. 


2 o6 Christian Work and Consolation. 

When Owen, the eminent theologian, was smitten 
with a fatal malady a friend approached him, ex¬ 
claiming, “ I am glad to see that you are still in 
the land of the living ! ” The dying saint, pointing 
upward, replied, “ I am still in the land of the 
dying, but I am going to the land of the living! ” 
Death is the birth of the soul into its true, its im¬ 
mortal life. Fear not to go, then. When the hour 
comes the grace for it will come also; but mean¬ 
while the grace, to be victorious over its fear, may 
be yours. And your joy may be full in the pros¬ 
pect. For no eye on earth hath seen, nor ear 
heard, nor hath it entered into any heart outside 
of Heaven to conceive of how much we have to 
die for. 

The problem of an effective and happy life is, 
then, an open secret. It is a life of self-conse¬ 
cration to God, and self-sacrifice for man. Death 
itself is its consummation, its exaltation, to them 
who by patient continuance in well doing seek for 
glory and honor and immortality. 


THE END. 





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